Hidden Tribes of America

 Hidden Tribes of America 

I wanted to share some excerpts from a website called The Hidden Tribes of America

America's Hidden Tribes

America is not split into two tribes, as we're sometimes told. In fact, we've identified seven distinct groups of Americans. These are our Hidden Tribes of America: distinguished not by who they are or what they look like, but what they believe.

The Hidden Tribes of America

Here's a quick snapshot of each group:

Progressive Activists (8 percent of the population) are deeply concerned with issues concerning equity, fairness, and America's direction today. They tend to be more secular, cosmopolitan, and highly engaged with social media.

Traditional Liberals (11 percent of the population) tend to be cautious, rational, and idealistic. They value tolerance and compromise. They place great faith in institutions.

Passive Liberals (15 percent of the population) tend to feel isolated from their communities. They are insecure in their beliefs and try to avoid political conversations. They have a fatalistic view of politics and feel that the circumstances of their lives are beyond their control.

The Politically Disengaged (26 percent of the population) are untrusting, suspicious about external threats, conspiratorially minded, and pessimistic about progress. They tend to be patriotic yet detached from politics.

Moderates (15 percent of the population) are engaged in their communities, well informed, and civic-minded. Their faith is often an important part of their lives. They shy away from extremism of any sort.

Traditional Conservatives (19 percent of the population) tend to be religious, patriotic, and highly moralistic. They believe deeply in personal responsibility and self-reliance.

Devoted Conservatives (6 percent of the population) are deeply engaged with politics and hold strident, uncompromising views. They feel that America is embattled, and they perceive themselves as the last defenders of traditional values that are under threat.

Core Beliefs and Demographics

Tribe membership (pictured here: Progressive Activists and Devoted Conservatives) predicts how people think about political issues better than standard categories (such as "Liberal" or "Republican")

• DACA
 
• Feminism
 
• Approve Donald Trump
 
• Police Brutality

Add standard demographics: 

• race
 
•  gender
 
•  ideology
 
•  party
 
•  education
 
•  religion

The Wings

Progressive Activists and Devoted Conservatives together comprise just 14 percent of the American population—yet it often feels as if our national conversation has become a shouting match between these two groups at the furthest ends of the spectrum. Together with Traditional Conservatives (who share values and tribalism like the Devoted Conservatives, just less intensely), they compose the 33 percent of people in the groups we label the Wings.

Combined, the members of these three tribes comprise just one-third of the population, but they often dominate our national conversation. Tribalism runs deep in their thinking. Their distrust and fear of the opposing side drives many of the people in these groups, and they have especially negative opinions of each other. When people today speak about how Americans seem to hate each other, they're usually talking about the opinions and behaviors of the Wings.

The Wings are also the most unified internally. On many of the most contentious issues—race, immigration, guns, LGBTQI+ rights—the people in these three tribes express high levels of unanimity. Often more than 90 percent of people in one of these groups holds the same view about a controversial issue, and typically, it will be the reverse of whatever the opposing wing believes. In contrast, the remaining two-thirds of Americans at the center show more diversity in their political views, express less certainty about them, and are more open to compromise and change—even on issues that we all tend to consider highly polarizing.

Why do the Wings dominate the conversation? A key reason is that polarization has become a business model. Media executives have realized that they can drive clicks, likes, and views, and make money for themselves and their shareholders, by providing people with the most strident opinions. This means that the most extreme voices―no matter how outlandish―often get the most airtime. In addition, people with the most extreme views are often the most certain of their positions. They are willing to argue with anyone and avoid moderating their opinions or conceding points to the other side. All this can make entertaining television and viral social media content. But it is distorting how we see each other, fracturing our society, and adding to distortions in our political system that give undue weight to the most extreme views.

Core Beliefs of the Wings Diverge Sharply

Devoted Conservatives emphasize traditional values and American identity, while Progressive Activists are defined by a rejection of traditional authority and a focus on rectifying historical injustices

The Exhausted Majority

While the story of the Wings may be one of division and conflict, a very different story is found in the rest of America. In fact, the largest group that we uncovered in our research has so far been largely overlooked. It is a group of Americans we call the Exhausted Majority―our collective term for the four tribes, representing a two-thirds majority of Americans, who aren’t part of the Wings. Although they appear in the middle of our charts and graphs, most members of the Exhausted Majority aren’t political centrists or moderates. On specific issues, their views range across the spectrum. But while they hold a variety of views, the members of the Exhausted Majority are also united in important ways:

• They are fed up with the polarization plaguing American government and society

• They are often forgotten in the public discourse, overlooked because their voices are seldom heard

• They are flexible in their views, willing to endorse different policies according to the precise situation rather than sticking ideologically to a single set of beliefs

• They believe we can find common ground

The distinction between the Wings and the Exhausted Majority takes us beyond a simple story of the left and the right. Based on their strong views and values, we believe both Traditional Conservatives and Devoted Conservatives belong in the Wings. On the other side, Progressive Activists belong in the Wings, but Traditional Liberals belong in the Exhausted Majority. They have clear liberal views, but unlike the three Wings tribes, they have a more diverse range of opinions, seem more concerned about the country’s divisions, and are more committed to compromise.

While partisans argue and score political points, members of the Exhausted Majority are so frustrated with the bitter polarization of our politics that many have checked out completely, ceding the floor to more strident voices. This is especially true of Politically Disengaged and Passive Liberals, while Traditional Liberals and Moderates remain engaged. Members of the Exhausted Majority tend to be open to finding middle ground. Furthermore, they aren’t ideologues who dismiss as evil or ignorant the people who don’t share their exact political views. They want to talk and to find a path forward.

The Majority of Americans Want Compromise

Real Problems, Real Differences, But Real Common Ground

There is far more common ground among Americans than we might imagine, judging from the constant conflict among pundits, politicians, and social media users. This is true even on some of our most debated issues. The Hidden Tribes survey just scratched the surface on those issues.

For example, a full 81 percent of the population―including Devoted Conservatives, who tend to be the most skeptical when it comes to questions of race―agrees that racism continues to be an at least somewhat serious problem in the United States. The fact that the overwhelming majority of people acknowledge that racism is a real problem opens the door for continued conversations about how the country moves forward.

Another key area of agreement is the aspect of immigration policy regarding Dreamers: people brought to the United States illegally as children and given provisional legal status under the DACA program during the Obama administration. Three-quarters of all Americans believe there should be a pathway for these individuals to obtain citizenship through serving in the military or attending college. This exemplifies how the current polarization is leading to gridlock in American politics and preventing us from finding solutions supported by an overwhelming majority.

One issue that Americans from most tribes regularly discuss is how they feel that people have become too quick to take offense and criticize others’ use of language. Four out of five Americans believe "political correctness has gone too far in America"—a issue where most Americans with liberal views agree with Conservatives, again showing America is so much more than two tribes.

Our Shared Future

The Hidden Tribes study illuminates several new findings regarding America’s past, present, and future.

• The American electorate is more complex than the oversimplified story of polarization would make us believe

• The reason American society appears to be split 50/50 is that the loudest and most extreme viewpoints monopolize airtime and social media space

• The majority of Americans, the Exhausted Majority, are frustrated and fed up with tribalism. They want to return to the mutual good faith and collaborative spirit that characterize a healthy democracy

• Being able to discuss our genuine disagreements remains important. At the root of those disagreements are differences in core beliefs―the underlying psychological architecture that governs what we value and how we see the world

• While our differences are often rooted in divergent views, that does not mean we cannot find common ground

• By acknowledging and respecting the values that animate our beliefs, we can begin to restore a sense of respect and unity

• The vast majority of Americans―three out of four―believe our differences are not so great that we cannot come together. Let’s make that a reality.

Quotes from:

The HiddenTribes of America

https://hiddentribes.us

• Blog Archive by Topic

Hidden Tribes of America

The Scientologist - A Manual on the Dissemination of Material, 1955

 

Ronald Hubbard

• Blog Archive by Topic

The Scientologist - A Manual on the Dissemination of Material, 1955

 

The actual substance of communication about what Scientology is, from the general public to the general public, should be that Scientology says that good health and immortality are attainable. That it is something compounded out of all man knows of the subject of man, and that people are living units operating bodies, rather than bodies, and that this living unit is the human soul. Given this much communication line, the general public can embroider enormously, and unless a person in the general public can express his opinions, and unless the subject gives him a chance to express his own opinions, and so let HIM be interestING, he will not talk about the subject.

Thus the data in the general public should give individuals a chance to be interesting, by knowing no more and no less than the above. We are not interested in sensationalism, personalities, or the complexity of Scientological methodology being discussed by the general public. As a subdivision of this, we do not want Scientology to be reported in the press, anywhere else than on the religious page of newspapers. It is destructive of word of mouth to permit the public presses to express their biassed and badly reported sensationalism.

Therefore we should be very alert to sue for slander at the slightest chance so as to discourage the public presses from mentioning Scientology. What the newspapers say is not word of mouth. As an example of this, how many minutes today have you spent in discussing current events? NEWSPAPER REPORTERS WRITING ARTICLES ON SCIENTOLOGY DO NOT EXPRESS SCIENTOLOGY. Scientologists should never let themselves be interviewed by the press. That’s experience talking!

As a subdivision of general public to general public we have the problem of the professions which might consider Scientology to be antipathetic to them, amongst these would be psychologists and medical doctors as well as psychiatrists. These persons are entirely in error when they express the opinion that Scientologists are against them. Scientology does not consider them sufficiently important to be against. Flour-pills or any incantation or system will produce in 22 percent of the public, benefit. Therefore, any practice or art can always achieve 22 percent recovery in their patients. It is when we better then 22 percent that we are being efficient. We have no more quarrel with a psychologist than we would have with an Australian witch-doctor.

We have no quarrel with a psychiatrist any more than we should quarrel with a barbarian because he had never heard of nuclear physics. And as for the medical doctor, we know very well that modern medical practice, having lately outgrown phlebotomy, has come of age to a point where it can regulate structure in a most remarkable and admirable way. In Scientology we believe a medical doctor definitely has his role in a society just as an engineer has his role in civil government. We believe that a medical doctor should perform emergency operations such as those made necessary by accidents; that he should perform orthopaedics; that he should deliver babies; that he should have charge of the administration of drugs; that his use of antibiotics is beneficial; and that where he immediately and curatively addresses structure he is of use in a community. The only place we would limit a medical doctor is in the field of treatment of psychosomatic medicine, where he has admittedly and continuously failed, and the only thing we would ask a medical doctor to change about his practice is to stop taking money for things he knows he cannot cure, i.e., spiritual, mental, psychosomatic, and social ills.

With regard to psychologists, medical doctors, and psychiatrists, then, what would one say in talking with them? But again we have section 10 of the Code of the Scientologist. You wouldn’t expect this psychologist, or psychiatrist, or medical doctor to get into an argument with you on how to get rats to find their way through mazes, how you would set a tibia, or what voltage you would put on an electric shock machine. Therefore, and equally, do not permit yourself to be put in the situation where you are discussing privately or in public, the methodologies of your wisdom. The attitude of a Scientologist toward people in these professions should be: “I have my techniques. It took me a long time to learn them just as it took you a long time to learn yours, and I am not going to try to make a minister out of you, and you are not going to try to make a medical doctor (psychiatrist, psychologist) out of me. I am an expert instructor only where it is intimately involved with the human spirit. I can produce my effects. You can produce yours. In view of the fact that you do not pretend to operate in the field of the human spirit, and I do not pretend to operate in the field of structure, I do not see how there can be any discussion. But things that I can’t handle in structure when called upon I will be very happy to refer to you, and I shall expect that when matters of the spirit come into question you will have enough understanding of life, where we are all specialists, to refer them to me.” A quiet explanation of this character will do a great deal to place you as a professional man in their realm of understanding of professional men.

Should anyone challenge you for having suddenly secured a relief in a hospital or an institution from some dire malady which balked the efforts of the professional men in charge of it, and should you ever be “called upon the carpet” for having “interfered” with the progress of a case, you should be extremely dismayed, and act it, to find yourself in the presence of barbarians who do not believe in the power of prayer, in the will of God, or the promises of Jesus Christ. And you should point out that, whereas the body was in their keeping, they did not at any time care to take purview of the human soul. And if anything has occurred because of the soul, in your province, then reacted upon the body, you believe that they are unwilling to admit the will of God in their treatment of human beings, and if this is the case you now, while you are being addressed by such people, discover yourself to be in a strange place where men pretending to be Christians doubt God, the Son of God, and the power of prayer. Your entire address to such people, in such a situation, publicly or privately, should be entirely overt, accusative, and not at any time apologetic. And you should immediately make it your business to place this matter before the proper authorities, that people are in charge of an institution here, are not Christians, and do not believe in God, and you should inform your accusers that you are going to do so.

Should you ever be arrested for practicing Scientology, treating people, make very sure, long before the time comes, that you have never used drugs or surgery, and that you have never prescribed a diet, or vitamins, and when that time might come, make very sure that you immediately and instantly, within two or three hours after your receipt of the warrant, have served upon the signer of that warrant, a personal civil suit for $100,000.00 damages for having caused the arrest of a Man of God going about his business in his proper profession, and for having brought about embarrassing publicity and molestation. Place the suit and WIRE THE HASI IMMEDIATELY. Make the whole interest during the entire time of such an unfortunate occurrence the fact that the signer of such a warrant, who would ordinarily be a medical doctor in charge of the medical department of some city, had dared fly in the teeth of religion. And use what is necessary of the earlier passage above to drive the point home. DO NOT simply fall back out of communication if you are attacked, but attack, much more forcefully, and artfully and arduously. And if you are foolish enough to have an attorney who tells you not to sue, immediately dismiss him and get an attorney who will sue. Or, if no attorney will sue, simply have an HASI suit form filled out and present it yourself to the county clerk in the court of the area in which your case has come up.

IN ALL SUCH CASES OF ARREST FOR THE PRACTICE OF SCIENTOLOGY, THE HASI WILL SEND A REPRESENTATIVE AT ONCE, BUT DO NOT WAIT FOR HIS ARRIVAL TO PLACE THIS SUIT. THE SUIT MUST ALREADY HAVE BEEN FILED WHEN THE HASI ATTORNEY ARRIVES.

In other words, do not, at any moment leave this act unpunished for, if you do you are harming all other Scientologists in the area. When you are attacked it is your responsibility then to secure from further attack not only yourself but all those who work with you. Cause blue flame to dance on the court house roof until everybody has apologized profusely for having dared to become so adventurous as to arrest a Scientologist who, as a minister of the church, was going about his regular duties. As far as the advices of attorneys go that you should not sue, that you should not attack; be aware of the fact that I, myself, in Wichita, Kansas, had the rather interesting experience of discovering that my attorney employed by me and paid by me, had been for some three months in the employ of the people who were attacking me, and that this attorney had collected some insignificant sum of money after I hired him, by going over to the enemy and acting upon their advices. This actually occurred, so beware of attorneys who tell you not to sue. And I call to your attention the situation of any besieged fortress. If that fortress does not make sallies, does not send forth patrols to attack and harass, and does not utilize itself to make the besieging of it a highly dangerous occupation, that fortress may, and most often does, fall.

The DEFENSE of anything is UNTENABLE. The only way to defend anything is to ATTACK, and if you ever forget that, then you will lose every battle you are ever engaged it, whether it is in terms of personal conversation, public debate, or a court of law. NEVER BE INTERESTED IN CHARGES. DO, yourself, much MORE CHARGING, and you will WIN. And the public, seeing that you won, will then have a communication line to the effect that Scientologists WIN. Don’t ever let them have any other thought than that Scientology takes all of its objectives.

Another point directly in the interest of keeping the general public to the general public communication line in good order: it is vitally important that a Scientologist put into action and overtly keep in action Article 4 of the Code: “I pledge myself to punish to the fullest extent of my power anyone misusing or degrading Scientology to harmful ends.” The only way you can guarantee that Scientology will not be degraded or misused is to make sure that only those who are trained in it practice it. If you find somebody practicing Scientology who is not qualified, you should give them an opportunity to be formally trained, at their expense, so that they will not abuse and degrade the subject. And you would not take as any substitute for formal training any amount of study.

You would therefore delegate to members of the HASI who are not otherwise certified only those processes mentioned below, and would discourage them from using any other processes. More particularly, of you discovered that some group calling itself “precept processing” had set up and established a series of meetings in your area, that you would do all you could to make things interesting for them. In view of the fact that the HASI holds the copyrights for all such material, and that a scientific organization of material can be copyrighted and is therefore owned, the least that could be done to such an area is the placement of a suit against them for using materials of Scientology without authority. Only a member of the HASI or a member of one of the churches affiliated with the HASI has the authority to use this information. The purpose of the suit is to harass and discourage rather than to win.

The law can be used very easily to harass, and enough harassment on somebody who is simply on the thin edge anyway, well knowing that he is not authorized, will generally be sufficient to cause his professional decease. If possible, of course, ruin him utterly.

— L. Ron Hubbard, 1955. 

 

 

 

Ronald Hubbard

 

The Five Real Conspiracies You Need to Know About

While millions of people are spellbound by false conspiracy theories, the real conspiracies that are wrecking our world go about their business unheeded. Here are five genuine threats that everyone should know about—and take action on.

The world is awash in a deluge of dangerous conspiracy theories. Most notoriously, the bizarre QAnon fantasy postulates that a global child sex-trafficking ring is being run by liberal, Satan-worshiping pedophiles whose plot will be uncovered by President Donald Trump on a “day of reckoning” involving mass arrests. This surreal mass delusion is not the only one infecting millions of people around the world. Earlier this year, the Plandemic conspiracy video went viral on social media, instilling disinformation into millions of minds about Covid-19, falsely alleging that it was a hoax perpetrated by big business for the sake of profiteering by selling mass vaccinations.

One of the most harmful results of these bogus conspiracy theories is that they help deflect people’s attention from the real conspiracies that are systematically damaging billions of people around the world, destroying the living Earth, and—if left unchecked—may drive our entire civilization to collapse. These are the conspiracies everyone needs to know about. Unlike the QAnon and Plandemic nonsense, they are real. The facts about them are in the open, yet these lethal conspiracies hide in plain sight, flagrantly going about their destructive activities while millions of people have their attention diverted toward pernicious fictions.

Let’s take a look at five of the most damaging conspiracies out there. As you consider them, I invite you to ponder how it is that, while our mass media focuses attention on imaginary conspiracies, the real ones that threaten every one of us are barely even discussed.

1. Conspiracy to turn the world into a giant marketplace for the benefit of the wealthy elite

Back in 1947, as the world was rebuilding from the destruction of the Second World War, a few dozen free-market ideologues met in a luxury Swiss resort to form the Mont Pelerin Society—an organization devoted to spreading the ideology of neoliberalism throughout the world. Their ideas—that the free market should dominate virtually all aspects of society, that regulations should be dismantled, and that individual liberty should eclipse all other considerations of fairness, equity, or community welfare—were considered fanatical at the time. Over three decades, though, financed by wealthy donors, they assiduously expanded their plot for global domination, establishing networks of academics, businessmen, economists, journalists, and politicians, in global centers of power.

When the stagflation crisis of the 1970s threw classic Keynesian economics into disrepute, their moment of opportunity arrived. By 1985, with free market disciples Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher entrenched in power, they initiated a campaign to systematically transform virtually all aspects of life into an unrestrained marketplace, where everything could be bought and sold to the highest bidder, subject to no moral scruple. They crippled trade unions, tore up social safety nets, reduced tax rates for the wealthy, eliminated regulations, and instituted a massive transfer of wealth from society at large to the uber-elite. Every time a new crisis occurred of their own making, such as the Great Recession of 2008, they took advantage of the mayhem they caused to double down on their power, and extend their reach even further, bringing the ideology of the marketplace into domains, such as education, law enforcement, or wilderness preserves, that had previously been considered sacrosanct.

The Neoliberal conspiracy has succeeded in transferring massive wealth to the uber-elite

With the advent of the Covid-19 pandemic, this conspiracy has found yet another opportunity to squeeze wealth from the bulk of society into the hands of the few. In the United States, since the pandemic began, while 200,000 Americans have died from coronavirus and more than 50 million have lost their jobs, the collective wealth of this country’s billionaires has soared 29% to $3.8 trillion. Jeff Bezos alone could give every Amazon employee $105,000 and still be as wealthy as he was before coronavirus hit.

2. Conspiracy by transnational corporations to turn billions of people into addicts

In the 1920s, two ruthless men laid out a sinister scheme to gain control of the minds of Americans. Their plan? To identify people’s deeply buried needs and use subtle messaging to manipulate them into doing whatever they wanted without realizing it—even at the cost of their health and well-being. One of them, Edward Bernays, was Sigmund Freud’s nephew and used his uncle’s insights into the subconscious to develop his new methods. Their goal was to turn normal working Americans into manic consumers, training them to desire an ever-increasing amount of goods, and thereby converting their life’s energy into profit for American corporations. “We must shift America from a needs to a desires culture,” declared Bernays’ partner, Paul Mazur. “People must be trained to desire, to want new things, even before the old have been entirely consumed. We must shape a new mentality. Man’s desires must overshadow his needs.”

In 1928, Bernays proudly described how his techniques for mental manipulation had already permitted a small elite to control the minds of the American population:

The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society. Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government that is the true ruling power of this country.
​We are governed, our minds molded, our tastes formed, our ideas suggested, largely by men we have never heard of. . . . In almost every act of our daily lives. . . we are dominated by the relatively small number of persons . . . who pull the wires which control the public mind.

Since then, this conspiracy has succeeded beyond its instigators’ wildest dreams. Corporations have perfected the technique of mind control by tweaking core human instincts that originally evolved to support our ancestors’ flourishing in hunter-gatherer bands—such as the desire for status or fear of exclusion—for their nefarious purposes.

Corporate predators have learned that the most valuable population to ensnare are children. In the sinister words of chief executive Wayne Chilicki, “When it comes to targeting kid consumers, we at General Mills . . . believe in getting them early and having them for life.” Children in the Global South are turned into junk food addicts with the same callous contempt that factory farms turn their animals into chicken nuggets. Half of the children in south Asia are now either undernourished or overweight, conditioned by pervasive advertising to spend what little money they have on the empty calories of junk food.

A new generation of mind controllers are now using sophisticated data mining technologies to inject their power even deeper into our minds. At the ominously named Stanford Persuasive Technology Lab, a modern-day Bernays named B. J. Fogg has taught budding entrepreneurs how to use “hot triggers” such as thumbs-up signs and “Like” statistics to activate short hits of dopamine in our brains that literally get us addicted to our screens. With social media now infiltrating every aspect of many teenagers’ lives, the power of predatory corporate advertising to control their minds for profit has become even more formidable. In 2017, a leaked document revealed Facebook boasting to advertisers how they can identify in real time when teenagers feel “insecure” and “worthless,” and would be most susceptible to a “confidence boost.”

3. Conspiracy to plunder the Global South for the benefit of the Global North

Ever since Portuguese and Spanish explorers set sail in the fifteenth century on a quest for wealth and power, a small population of white Europeans have conspired to use their technological advantage to despoil, plunder, and exploit the rest of the world’s wealth for their own benefit. With the Treaty of Saragossa in 1529, Spain and Portugal carved up the non-European continents between them for conquest and booty. After the Industrial Revolution, the countries of northern Europe took over the plot for global supremacy, devastating the lives of tens of millions of Africans mercilessly chained and shipped as slaves to the colonies.

After the abolition of the slave trade, the brutal exploitation continued through an international system of indentured labor. Having destroyed their livelihood in their native countries, European potentates transported more than 60 million desperate workers from India, China, and the Pacific islands to territories where they were needed, in what was frequently referred to as the “new form of slavery.” This vast global scheme of human trafficking was promoted by colonial magnates such as Cecil Rhodes who declared: “We must find new lands from which we can easily obtain raw materials and at the same time exploit the cheap slave labour that is available from the natives of the colonies. The colonies would also provide a dumping ground for the surplus goods produced in our factories.”

In more recent times, the plot continues in different guises. During the decades after the Second World War, Global South leaders who demanded a fair role in the economic system were systematically deposed in coups arranged by U.S., British, and French militaries. In a vast loan sharking scheme, countries impoverished by colonialism then racked up unsustainable debts forced on them by Global North banks. When they couldn’t pay them back without bankrupting their nations, they were coerced into so-called “structural adjustment programs” which opened their labor markets and natural resources to further plunder by the North’s transnational corporations. The World Bank, IMF, and World Trade Organization are all controlled by a few wealthy nations that set the terms for international trade, with the result that through a combination of illicit financial flows, debt interest payments, and profit repatriation, wealth continues to flow from the South to the North at the rate of about $3 trillion per year.

The income gap between Global North and South has quadrupled since 1960. Data from World Bank.

4. Conspiracy to hide the effects of climate breakdown for corporate profit

For over fifty years, fossil fuel executives have known about the reality of human-induced climate change, yet they spent most of that time deliberately concealing their knowledge and obfuscating public discussion on the topic so they could rake in trillions of dollars in profit. In 1968, the Stanford Research Institute alerted the American Petroleum Institute—the national trade association that represents America’s oil and natural gas industry—to the fact that CO2 emissions were accumulating in the atmosphere, and could reach 400 parts per million by 2000. Their report warned that rising CO2 levels would result in melting ice caps, rising seas, and serious environmental damage worldwide. Exxon scientists studied the issue further, reporting to management in 1977 that there was “overwhelming” consensus that fossil fuels were responsible for CO2 increases. In an internal Exxon memo in 1981, scientists raised the alarm that the company’s 50-year plan “will later produce effects which will indeed be catastrophic (at least for a substantial fraction of the Earth’s population).”

Exxon—and the other fossil fuel companies—knew their actions would lead to climate breakdown, and instead of trying to solve the problem, they lied to the public to hide their misdeeds. Following the example of the tobacco industry, which had already condemned millions to early deaths through cynical deception, they embarked on a concerted strategy to dupe the public by paying fake experts to publish papers; cherry picking selective data to support false conclusions; and sow their own wild conspiracy theories to deflect attention from their crimes.

As a result of their immoral plot, the world is now facing a dire climate emergency. If the fossil fuel companies had confronted the issue honestly from the outset, there could have been a managed transition to renewable energy over decades, causing little disruption and saving millions of lives through reduced pollution. Instead, it will now take an immediate global mobilization to avoid a 2° C rise in temperature over preindustrial levels. The world is currently on track for more than a 3° C rise this century, with the high likelihood of stumbling into a tipping point cascade that quickly leads to a three- and four-degree world—one that becomes rapidly unrecognizable, with the Amazon rainforest turning into searing desert; coastal cities inundated by flooding; super-hurricanes tearing the windows out of skyscrapers; persistent massive droughts and famine across the world; and hundreds of millions of desperate climate refugees.

Meanwhile, by putting billions of human lives in jeopardy, the four biggest fossil fuel companies—ExxonMobil, Royal Dutch Shell, Chevron, and BP—have made $2 trillion in profits since they began their campaign of lies in 1990.

5. Conspiracy to grow the global economy indefinitely, while killing most of life on Earth and risking the collapse of civilization.

In a barely noticed footnote to the daily news, the World Wildlife Fund recently released a shocking report revealing a devastating 68% worldwide decline in animal populations in the past fifty years. Even this dismal news hides more gut-wrenching statistics, such as the 84% decline in amphibians, reptiles, and fishes, or the 94% decline in animal populations in South America.

This is just the latest bulletin marking the demise of nature as it succumbs to the relentless growth of human economic activity across the world. Three-quarters of all land has been appropriated for human purposes, either turned into farmland, covered by concrete, or flooded by reservoirs. Three-quarters of rivers and lakes are used for crop or livestock cultivation, with many of the world’s greatest rivers, such as the Ganges, Yangtze, or Nile, no longer reaching the sea. Half of the world’s forests and wetlands have disappeared—the Amazon rainforest alone is vanishing at the rate of an acre every second.

Meanwhile, the world’s Gross Domestic Product is forecast to nearly triple by the middle of this century, by which time it’s estimated that 5 billion people will be facing water shortages, 95% of the Earth’s arable land will be degraded—and there will be more plastic than fish in the ocean. It’s been estimated by leading experts that, by the end of this century, half of the world’s estimated 8 million species will be extinct or at the brink of extinction unless humanity changes its ways. These depredations, combined with climate breakdown, are believed by an increasing number of analysts to spell the likely collapse of modern civilization.

The underlying cause of this headlong rush to catastrophe is our society’s obsession with economic growth as the sole criterion for measuring success. A dangerous myth of “green growth” propagated by techno-optimists argues that through technological innovation, GDP can become “decoupled” from resource use and carbon emissions, permitting limitless growth on a finite planet. This has been shown to be nothing but a fantasy: it hasn’t happened so far, and even the most wildly aggressive assumptions for greater efficiency lead to unsustainable consumption of global resources.

So who, in this case, are the conspirators? If you’re living a normal life in an affluent country, you don’t need to look further than the mirror. The wealthy OECD nations, with only 18% of the global population, account for 74% of global GDP, and the richest 10% of people are responsible for more than half the world’s carbon emissions.

Those of us who continue to benefit from the inequities dealt us by the global system, and aren’t actively engaged in curbing it, are like a few shipwrecked survivors on a gilded lifeboat kicking others desperately scrambling for life into the ocean to protect their own safety and comfort. We may not be actively kicking their knuckles, but by allowing this reckless system of unsustainable growth to continue, we’re implicitly making the same choice.

So, the next time someone tells you to “do your research” on their new conspiracy theory, please point them to the real conspiracies that are threatening life on this beautiful but troubled planet. The good news is that, since they’re real conspiracies, there is something we can do about them. We can vote in politicians that promise to peel back the neoliberal nightmare; advocate for curbs on predatory corporate activities; support the Global South in changing the terms of international trade; declare a Climate Emergency in our community to turn around carbon emissions; and become active in the movement to transform our global society to an Ecological Civilization—one that is based on life-affirming principles rather than accumulating wealth.

---

Jeremy Lent is author of The Patterning Instinct: A Cultural History of Humanity’s Search for Meaning, which investigates how different cultures have made sense of the universe and how their underlying values have changed the course of history. His upcoming book, The Web of Meaning: Integrating Science and Traditional Wisdom to Find Our Place in the Universe, will be published in Spring 2021 (New Society Publishers: US/Canada | Profile Books: UK/Commonwealth). For more information visit jeremylent.com.

• Blog Archive by Topic

 

The Difference Between Liberals and Leftists

Nathan Allebach

Nov 24, 2021 · 12 min read

Nothing fuels online discourse like fights over language. New terms will popularize in a subculture then trickle into the zeitgeist until they lose universal meaning if it was ever there to begin with. Terminology such as “weaponize,” “virtue signal,” “identity politics,” “moral panic,” “bad faith,” and “cancel culture” gets diffused so widely and unsystematically that it feels impossible to pin down what someone means without a litany of qualifiers and caveats.

But one reason we fight over language is that we are after clarity. It’s not the only reason people have terminological disputes — sometimes, as Oliver Traldi puts it, those disputes are forms of gatekeeping. But it’s also true that clearly defining our terms gets us closer to being able to figure out whose arguments are strongest.

This piece aims to clarify a framework that is ubiquitous in online discussion — the definitional disconnect between liberal and leftist. These terms — and the broader political spectrum they belong to — are contested, seeing as their meaning has varied historically and around the world. Because they continue to be so widely used (and misused), and because they continue to function as the very categories we use to understand people’s political identities and associations, it’s crucial for their meanings to be as widely, uniformly accessible as possible.

Defining Labels with Positions and Ethos

When determining what makes someone a liberal or leftist there are two key models we can use.

The first looks at an individual’s positions. What policies do they support? Do they prefer incrementally reforming our healthcare system or shifting to a single-payer approach? Do they support prison abolitionism? Abolishing the police? Do they support the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement? Do they generally favor universalistic provisions over means-tested ones? Do they favor policies designed to redress class-based inequities? This model uses policy preferences as an instrument to determine where one falls on the political spectrum.

The second looks at an individual’s ethos. This model is slightly harder to pin down, but has to do with political behaviors that don’t pick out one policy or another. For example, what “side” or ideological community does an individual critique more? What media do they consume? Which views do they think fall outside the bounds of reasonable debate? What slogans do they use — or, perhaps better, what slogans do they criticize? (“#Resist” and “eat the rich” reliably pick out two different groups.)

Both models — positions and ethos — are important. But it would seem people focus more on ethos. This makes sense, since most discussions aren’t over the technical specifications of one policy versus another. Rather, we pay more attention to elements like what a discourse participant tends to regularly emphasize or what they consistently fail to address. We look at things like who their audience is, who they most regularly associate with. Since people can easily claim to be politically this or that (“I’m a progressive but…” or “Although I’m a conservative, I think…”), many observers find it more illuminating to look at what these discourse participants spend most of their time discussing or defending. This can seem more representative of their political positioning than their nominal political affiliations.

Some broad binaries that illustrate common differences in ethos between liberals and leftists are reform vs revolution, pragmatism vs idealism, and compromise vs demands.

What’s In A Liberal?

In the U.S., liberals are standardly seen as social liberals rather than as some other form of liberal, such as classical liberals. One confusing aspect is rival ideological groups situate liberals in quite different positions on the political spectrum: liberals are seen as center-left or centrist by leftists, but seen as just generally-on-the-left by people on the right. So those to the left of social liberals see them as center-left, centrist, or even on the right, whereas those to their right see them as just being on the left.

Complicating things further is that “liberal” varies around the world. The Liberal Democratic Party of Japan (LDP) is considered conservative and Liberal Party in Canada is considered center-left, for example. In Europe, liberalism is usually understood to be something closer to neoclassical liberalism, or, as it might be known in the U.S., bleeding-heart libertarianism — favoring free-markets, softer borders, global commerce, and a focus on humanitarian concerns.

There is yet another meaning for “liberalism”: some use it to refer to the political philosophy centered around civil liberties, the social configuration usually tethered to democracy and capitalism due to its emphasis on robust private property rights and the belief that its inhabitants are free and equal members of society.

I’ll stick to social liberalism as the working understanding of liberalism, since that’s the group that most gets associated with the “liberal” label in the U.S. today.

Through an economic lens, liberals support capitalism with varying degrees of regulation and social programs to alleviate market inadequacies. This can range from a center-friendly neoliberal approach (favoring more markets and globalization) to a left-leaning social democratic approach (favoring a more muscular welfare regime and statist intervention). At times, and under different analyses, the economically neoliberal approach can be closer to a classical liberal or libertarian conceptualization of liberalism, whereas an economically social democratic approach can veer towards leftism or socialism. But even though economic liberalism can sometimes appear libertarian on the one hand or leftist on the other, liberalism is big enough to accommodate both the neoliberal and social democratic approach. In other words, it doesn’t have to be the case that implementing a more austere safety net (as historic iterations of neoliberalism have preferred) or very high marginal tax rates (as social democracies require) takes one away from being a liberal on economic grounds — again, this is a range of positions that liberalism can accommodate.

Through a social lens, liberals can be moderately progressive to radically progressive. Frameworks like feminism or intersectionality are frequently used by liberals to analyze issues through identity traits like race, gender, class, and geography. That said, there are also reactionary liberal contingents, such as gender-critical feminists and cultural critics who pump the brakes on what they perceive to be excesses of progressivism, without going as far as conservatives in their rejection of identitarianism. Democrats on the center-left often align with conservatives on issues like foreign policy, policing, or fracking as well. Though it sounds paradoxical, there are even illiberal liberals, or perhaps it would be more accurate to say liberals who are illiberal about certain fundamental elements of liberalism, e.g., social liberals who favor restrictions on speech to an extent that it complicates their ability to genuinely maintain that they believe in the importance of free speech.

In terms of ethos, liberals embody incrementalism, reform, pragmatism, and compromise. Their antithesis is the revolutionary or accelerationist impulse. Liberals emphasize gradual progress, they typically value consensus building, and they base policy decisions on what’s popular or feasible at a given time. Liberals are likely to applaud corporations, institutions, and media for increasing their inclusivity of minority groups, though they are perhaps the least capable of detecting that the symbolic gestures these entities offer are only just marketing ploys or PR campaigns. Inspirational messaging like Obama’s “Yes We Can” is meaningful to liberals because an underlying tenet of liberalism of the current variety is that progress doesn’t merely — or even principally — come about via systemic change, but rather follows cultural attitudes.

This is why some liberal rhetoric may sound revolutionary, or carry with it a tinge of moral urgency, only to later get dialed back during the actual processes of governing and legislating. This sets up a recurring rhetorical battle with leftists who expect revolutionary campaign promises to be fulfilled by revolutionary legislation — and when that doesn’t happen, rather than support the liberal candidate on at-least-they’re-better-than-the-right-wing grounds, leftists denounce the liberal in power just as strongly as the right, which frustrates liberals.

Although liberals at times appear aspirationally utopian, in practice they are interested in altering the status quo, not replacing it. Liberals, much like leftists, view our institutions as fragile, but unlike leftists, believe fixing them is a better solution than uprooting them.

What’s In A Leftist?

Leftists, a group mainly comprised of socialists, communists, and anarchists, are usually anti-capitalist. Liberals sometimes see themselves as leftists, or view themselves as being “on the left,” since liberals are likely to place themselves as left-of-center on the political spectrum — but leftists typically reserve “left” and “left-of-center” for people whose political orientation is to the left of liberalism. Those who lean right tend to use “the left” and “leftist” as a way of picking out anyone to their left, which includes the vast swathe of liberals.

Just as with “liberalism,” what counts as “leftist” varies around the world. The Socialist Party of France is considered center-left and Communist Party of India is considered far-left, for example. Historically, the term “left-wing” has been used to describe dozens of leftist philosophies including Marxism, Leninism, Maoism, Trotskyism, and Anarcho-Syndicalism, just to name a few. Some also define social democrats as leftists, as well as left-leaning liberals with a substantive critique of capitalism or those who participate in labor movements.

Through an economic lens, though leftists sometimes share goals with liberals — such as when leftists and social liberals or social democrats want more socialized programs — leftists go further than liberals. Even in its most moderate forms, leftism supports actions undermining the capitalist superstructure in society, such as incentives for democratizing workplaces with unions and co-ops, or supporting mutual aid and communes. Radical leftists, going further, support a wholesale overthrow of capitalism, which can take the form of workers forcibly seizing the means of production, the abolition of private property, the nationalization of all industries with a view to full collective ownership, or even violent revolution. Within leftism, the end goals sometimes vary, but all forms of it situate capitalism at the core of our social malaise.

Through a social lens — which, under leftism, cannot meaningfully be separated from the economic lens — leftism’s goals sometimes overlap with progressive forms of liberalism. Not always, though — leftists and some socially progressive liberals might agree on, say, criminal justice reform, but they will tend to disagree on whether class or race is the most salient analytical input for advancing justice. Focusing on building class consciousness as opposed to engaging in what they sometimes deride as “performative activism,” leftists prefer to address material conditions rather than whatever symbolic changes end up being prescribed by a concern over racial “identity politics.” This is because leftists believe racial identity politics can be easily addressed without oppressed people gaining much of anything at all; corporations and institutions are able to play-act as though they are pursuing social reform but, according to the leftist, in the end it’s just a vacuous branding exercise. Minority representation doesn’t mean much if the system is exploitative through and through. There are also reactionary leftists such as parts of the “dirtbag left,” areas where left-wing and right-wing populism overlap, as well as authoritarian contingents that are pejoratively referred to as tankies.

In terms of ethos, leftists fundamentally view the world through the frame of power dynamics, such as anti-imperialism, anti-colonialism, anti-hierarchy, and class conflict between workers and owners. They believe the systems in place are corrupted by capital. This totalizing framework is why ideas on this side take on a similar form: like “ACAB” (all cops are bastards) or decrying “lesser of two evils” reasoning during elections. They believe the clock is ticking on addressing matters like climate change, economic devastation, and the forward march of fascist regimes — liberals sometimes do too, but leftists see a greater urgency, which is one reason why they push for more immediate, more radical, solutions. If we’re operating with a simple binary of liberal or illiberal social configuration, many leftists will endorse tenets of philosophical liberalism (such as democracy), but they’ll believe social liberalism on its own will inevitably fail to defend them. Leftists believe in philosophical liberalism’s commitment to equality, but they think that this way of ordering society can easily fall into oligarchy and produce widespread social alienation. Some leftists also reject the liberal ethos of civil discourse or so-called respectability politics. To them, certain ideas that serve the goals of capitalists, fascists, and racists shouldn’t be debated and instead should be mocked, deplatformed, or violently fought — since to treat them politely is to grant them respectability, which in turn is to pave the way for their ability to harm.

Since there’s no prominent left-wing party in America today, leftists often ally with liberals in hopes to either reshape the Democratic Party or influence culture enough to start their own. Some leftists are big-tent advocates, while others prefer fracturing into niche communities.

What about Social Democrats and Progressives?

Social democrats have historically been part of the reformist wing of the socialist tradition, but social democratic policies fall within the economic parameters of capitalism so liberals embrace the label as well. Even some leftists call social democrats liberals because they argue their model maintains the status quo and is only sustainable by relying on developed countries for support and exploiting developing countries for resources — arguments that some social democrats reject, citing that not all global trade deals are de facto imperialist exploitation and that their model is a demonstrable transition to forms of leftism, or in some cases, sustainable on its own. More radical leftists believe social democratic reforms — such as FDR’s New Deal — act as mere bandages to the wounds inflicted by capitalism, wounds needing surgery rather than cosmetic changes.

Just as “social democrat” is a common economic label that has historically been a source of tension between liberals and leftists, “progressive” is a common social label between them. Progressives are colloquially seen as people wanting to move society forward on a number of social issues, in contrast to conservatives more in favor of retaining the status quo. Though it mainly picks out a social program, “progressive” can describe economic views as well, but the economic views are in service to the philosophy’s socially progressive aims.

Most prominent non-right-wing figures are characterizable as either liberal or left. Some have their places on the spectrum contested. For example, some liberals believe Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez are leftist given their rhetorical openness to “socialism” and their preference for policies like Medicare-for-All; while some leftists see them as basically just liberals slightly to the left of most other liberals given factors like Ocasio-Cortez’s affiliation with the Democratic Party and Sanders’s endorsement of liberal candidates. Going beyond political figures and looking at people in the discourse more broadly, Noam Chomsky and ContraPoints have each run into the same critiques. Chomsky may be considered far-left by many in the mainstream, but some leftists consider him a moderate compared to more radical figures like Michael Parenti. ContraPoints was one of the first leftist creators to break through on YouTube in 2017 with video essays critiquing capitalism, yet has faced accusations of not furthering leftist ideas enough. Some figures may not want the baggage of the leftist label to begin with; some may wish to see socialism in the future but currently only care about social democratic goals; some may be more focused on social issues than theory; and others may simply not fit so neatly into leftist spaces. That’s why even though most people not on the right can be categorized as either liberal or left, there exists a substantial grey area between the two.

The U.S. is a mixed economy in a capitalist system, which is similar to most countries to varying degrees. Liberalism is the predominant political philosophy of the land, and conservatism is an ever-present orientation against most forms of rapid social change, making “liberal” and “conservative” the most commonly used labels. Leftism is growing in the U.S. today, but its more radical forms remain on the fringes. So whenever you see leftism, it’s usually the sort that has some overlapping elements with some of the least moderate forms of liberalism. All this makes it difficult to reach universally agreed upon labels, especially since political spectra are measured differently around the world.

Some people are strict in their label definitions, some avoid them all together, and others use several in combination. There’s no hard line between liberals and leftists that acts as a catch-all, which is why analyzing someone’s positions and ethos in tandem can help with loose categorization. Everybody wants belonging and identity, but there’s a limitation to labels when they mean something different to so many groups. Most people aren’t ideologically consistent and don’t fit neatly within a political compass quadrant. As the saying goes, ask 10 people in a group to define the group’s beliefs and you’ll get 11 answers. But as long as there are competing ideologies, there will always be worthwhile fights over the language to describe them in the discourse. If nothing else, these fights bring us closer to a place where we can evaluate which perspective, seen as a package, is closest to being correct.

• Blog Archive by Topic

Read the original article in Arc Digital: