Sociology – Unspoken Politics

On “the culture war”

Throughout 2022, but in particular in the aftermath of the midterm election, I’ve been circulating thoughts in my head about the term the culture war and how I would approach it from a sociological lens.

There are a couple of considerations that I want to address, in particular when the term has arisen in various forms of media. The culture war is not a catch-all for non-economic political issues, they often involve fundamental rights and also connect to a material base- basic Marxism here. It is also an asymmetrical term, so I want to avoid false equivalence. The culture war is a political process often for very cynical, self-serving reasons by right-wing political elites, but those affected by it are not “another side” of it.

So I want to define the culture war as best as I can using what has been circulating in my mind:

The “cultural war” is a political process wherein issues are pressed:

By conservative elites, a nexus of wealthy political donors, the conservative media, and politicians and their operatives.
Are aimed at activating white evangelicals in particular
Are tied to elections, with a limited number of culture war issues in the spotlight at any one time, and they are often dropped by elites for use later
However, they are framed as existential threats to America that are undermining some abstract values

We see some issues wax and wane for decades- the concern today about “smut” in libraries and classrooms goes back in its modern form to about 1974, when a frenzy was whipped up in West Virginia. For my lifetime, from Tango Makes Three to Gender Queer, the thrust has gone from certain language and depictions of heterosexual intimacy to anything regarding queer themes. This is a linkage in social movement literature, which lead to bloc recruitment (when a whole group comes as a single entity). People who didn’t really care about “banned books” for the most part, when a media frenzy and money being funneled into the issue led to dramatically increased attendance and hostility at school and library board meetings. So it went from a niche movement to a central point of cultural warfare.

As you remember, 2004 was the peak of anti-marriage equality as an election strategy. So many states had ballot measures attempting to bring out more apathetic voters (again, the centrality of almost every culture war topic is activating white evangelicals). As with 2022, it’s difficult to find convincing evidence that this ultimately mattered (https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/ps-political-science-and-politics/article/abs/samesex-marriage-and-the-2004-presidential-election/1EF13FD3DEC005457783AF1DF79928D6). I would hypothesize that voters are, in many states, more apathetic than the media-political class. Even very red states in 2022 failed to advance abortion from the Dobbs decision to ballot measures, with a lot of vote splitting. The culture war is most felt acutely at the local level, where highly committed but numerically small ardent right-wing groups have the most leverage.

Transphobia and homophobia were an issue ushered in significantly in general and especially in regards to education, but even in reddest Utah, it doesn’t register (“other” is 13% so at most we’re talking one in ten people, probably much lower) (https://www.deseret.com/2022/7/25/23272939/heres-the-top-issue-on-voters-minds-ahead-of-federal-elections-inflation-economy-congress-president). With school policy as a whole, besides recurring concerns like class sizes and assistance to students who lag behind in expectations. Also the Uvalde shooting showed a much more existential threat to schools than any concerns about culture war issues.

I would say that the culture war is most pushed by red state politicians today, while nationally independents and liberals are often on the same page with progressive topics. Also, Democrats fell into a trap on a major issue in 2022, with Eric Adams and others raising fears of crime that the media was pushing- leading to a huge under-performance in New York. However, liberals, though often not vociferous about things, rejected the framing of gender identity and sexuality by the right and avoided it becoming the non-stop coverage by media of all types that promoted inaccurate narratives on crime.

It has been 42 years since the Christian right was fully politically activated in the election of Ronald Reagan. For a long time, before the radicalization of conservatives in the 1994, 2010, and 2016 electoral cycles, political elites generally used culture war appeals to win elections but did not have them as a serious priority. In my lifetime, more of the political right elites have gone from opportunists to true believers, bringing cultural warfare to the center of policy. Also, the media-political connection has changed with the deregulation of media in the late 1980s and the gradual move of much more extreme talk radio to television and political talking points.

To win liberation for oppressed groups, and to counter activated voters who become activists, a much more vibrant liberal-left political culture must emerge to counter the activists themselves but also the many wealthy elites who pour money into concern trolling on Critical Race Theory and who can say what in schools. Also direct action must play more of a role- the Supreme Court now has hard-right majority and is willing to rule decisively on things like abortion and discrimination that earlier courts tended to punt on. Though there is no political horizon thus far to actually counter the court through elections, SCOTUS is self-destructing its credibility and causing cracks in some parts of the Republican coalition, especially right-leaning independents. There is a time to seize the moment. The time is now.

Right-Wing Influence on the Unitarian Universalist Liberal-Left Disagreement (Part II)

This is a follow up to part one, which explored the historical tension and relationship of liberal and leftist communities, both in general and within the Unitarian Universalist faith.

While there is a centuries-long dialogue between liberal and leftist traditions, sometimes constructive and sometimes conflict-ridden, this relationship does not exist in isolation. The political and cultural Right is ideologically opposed to both liberals and leftists, and has benefitted from the two groups being at odds with one another. Reactionary forces have fruitfully employed divide-and-conquer. This continues to the present day. I will examine this largely through the lens of the Unitarian Universalist experience, though trends and events that involve larger milieu will be involved.

Free Speech: Tip of the Spear

I was recommended P. E. Moskowitz’s The Case Against Free Speech (released in August 2019) by a UU minister during our conversations on the rise of white nationalism and the alt-right pipeline. As one might expect, the title is not a comprehensive summary of the content of the book. A key point made is that free speech has been an issue triumphed by the political Right, which uses it in a bad-faith way to support the powerful and allow dangerous groups to organize and propagate.

Unsurprisingly, the Koch Brother(s) are a key engine of this, as this article in the American Prospect makes clear. I’ll quote it at length and bold some of the key points:

You’ve probably heard their arguments before: They claim to be opposed to censorship, “no-platforming” (when people are excluded from online or offline forums because of the views they express), and any attempts to discourage the open expression of ideas. These figures—who self-identify as classical liberals, conservatives, and libertarians—say that their project is completely non-ideological: It’s just about giving everyone a fair hearing.

But these same free-speech warriors went mum earlier this month when one of their own, Canadian psychologist Jordan Peterson, met with Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orban, who has bragged about making Hungary “an illiberal state, a non-liberal state,” and has provoked mass protests for cracking down on academic freedom. Crowder’s defenders have also neglected to mention that he once went with a camera crew to the workplace of a commenter he disagreed with, harassing them and trying to get them fired. Indeed, IDW members and their acolytes have repeatedly fought against allowing those they disagree with a platform to speak.

It’s easy to dismiss the outrage and inconsistency of online free-speech warriors who profit off of controversy. But there’s a more serious and troubling dynamic at play: The “free speech movement,” including not only online pundits but also think tanks, academics, activist groups, and their mainstream popularizers, has always been about free speech for the right—and suppressing the speech of everyone else. It is by and large funded by right-wing billionaires like the Koch brothers, who whip up anger about the “intolerant left” in order to stymie opposition to their social, economic, and political agenda.

Free speech has been a key wedge issue between liberal and leftist communities. This is a very old phenomenon, with the planned Nazi march through the village of Skokie, Illinois being a historical example. The American Civil Liberties Union is proud of its long history of defending hate speech (and actions), being the prototypical liberal organization that looks at right-wing hate through a rights-based framework. The National Lawyers Guild (NLG), which has long been to the left of the ACLU on most issues, has criticized how this defense works in practice, such as the propagation of far-right discourse and hate speech on college campuses. Note that the NLG article refers to the ACLU as “our allies”, indicating that free speech is an issue that can create tension, but does not mean that liberal and left communities need to fragment in the face of right-wing assertiveness.

There are two ways the Right uses free speech to attempt to drive a wedge between liberals and leftists (or between certain degrees and tendencies within those two groups):

Latch onto a fringe group without resources. As the Prospect article mentions, there are now a group of “free speech proponents” (largely online, who exploit controversy to make money and enter mainstream conversations) that will promote any view, however marginal it is in the real world. This may not be material supporting them with money, but instead given them massive amounts of free publicity, and making liberal and leftist groups form a response to them (which can foster a divide).
Directly fund divisive individuals and groups. The Federalist Society has been enormously influential in driving a rightward turn in the American judiciary, and directly places controversial and/or hateful speakers in places like college campuses. If a divide opens up on how liberals and leftists should respond, it is instigated by the Right. The Right has all the initiative and drives the conversation. When a liberal group like the ACLU expends time, resources, and political capital to defend this speech, it is doing so in service of right-wing aims beyond the speech itself. The Koch brothers and other billionaire reactionaries are wasting a finite amount of liberal and leftist resources.

Leftist Stereotypes and SJW Hysteria

Another tactic these right-wing grifter/propagandists (they’re really one and the same) engage in is to promote left-wing (or “left-wing”) voices in ways that make them seem unreasonable, violent, or otherwise antithetical to “free speech” (the right-wing version that liberals have largely embraced or at least not rejected). There are a few variants of this:

Promote a truly marginal view. Sometimes there are just bad takes on social media or protest speeches. These voices are not representative of larger communities or ideologies, they’re just idiosyncratic and flawed. Note that this doesn’t mean the person is a member of a marginalized group, but that the position itself is marginal- one with no real currency among any existing organizing group or collective.
Promote a reasonable view but remove its context and otherwise butcher it. You can take a good take on social media or a protest and make it look like the first bullet point through selective editing. We see this all the time with the Project Veritas crowd and its imitators, who have since the ACORN “expose” over a decade ago have infiltrated leftist spaces, recorded usually fairly normal and reasonable statements, and edited them to sound violent or otherwise unhinged.
Just falsify a leftist. Creating fake accounts is easy. Instagram influencers do it, governments do it, and so do political propagandists and their billionaire funders. It’s incredibly easy to have a “leftist” Twitter account post something inflammatory, unhinged, or violent and point to it. YouTube personalities like Tim Pool specialize in going through leftist social media that may or may not be completely fake. The outrage certainly is.

The end destination is the same- put liberals on the spot and say “do you agree with what these people are saying?” The result is a trap- as presented, liberals aren’t going to agree with them (at the very least because it’s leftist ideology that has different core principles, but more likely because it’s intentionally presented as poorly thought-out or advocating for violence). The right-wing provocateur and the liberal are thus joined together promoting free speech, and a divide is created between the liberal and the leftist that would not exist, or be as deep and complete, without right-wing interference. As stated in Part I, liberal-left disagreements within Unitarian Universalist communities are historical and will always exist, but they can be manufactured too. Free speech is the best example of an issue that is almost wholly a domain of the right- liberal groups that triumph or defend free speech are frequently doing it in support of right-wing groups, or using right-wing language and terminology. This in some ways resembles fishhook theory, which is a counter to horseshoe theory. Here’s an explainer of the difference in the Pacific Standard:

The main argument for Horseshoe Theory is that both the far left and the far right are opposed to the centrist, neoliberal/capitalist status quo. Communists and fascists in the 1930s criticized the aging imperial democracies of Britain, France, and the United States as weak, corrupt, and—post-Great Depression—as hurtling toward a final collapse. More recently, the argument goes, left-wing radicals opposed centrist Hillary Clinton and France’s Emmanuel Macron. By doing so, they offered de facto (and sometimes more than de facto) aid to racist, nationalist opponents like Trump and Marine Le Pen. We are told that left and right both want to destroy democratic norms and the sensible center. Therefore, Horseshoe Theory says, they work together.

and Fishhook Theory:

Centrists enable fascism with such predictable frequency that the left has come up with an alternative to Horseshoe Theory: Fish Hook Theory. Fish Hook Theory suggests that the political spectrum is shaped like a fish hook, with the left out on one end and the far right bending around like a hook to wind up close to the center.

Free speech is an example where the alt-right and the center (which if we’re talking truly far-left and far-right ideologies here, liberalism is definitely in the center) converge and differentiate from the right. Liberals are not without principles, though they may also be “moderates” and end up trying to balance two very uneven sides in a way that slides to the right. But these principles can be hijacked. Free speech is an obvious one. Protection of private property is another one- if you hold a liberal, principled defense of private property, then you’ll align with the right when leftists damage security cameras, bank windows, or privatized immigration detention camps. The right has a lot of media salience and a lot of financial backing to make these cleavages happen- they can couch it in reasonable language like “don’t you want freedom of speech?” or “aren’t people entitled to what they’ve earned?”, but this may mean sliding to a right-wing conclusion of those starting points.

An obvious ending point for this series is a discussion of this summer’s major controversy, Rev. Eklof’s The Gadfly Papers. Like many people who witnessed the initial fallout of its publication, I don’t want to give the Reverend $7.99 to see whether it’s in fact racist and transphobic (though I believe UU groups when they publish responses calling it that, and those that aren’t friends with him that have written critiques of it). That may be for another day.

Healing and Reconciliation in Unitarian Universalism: An Ethnographic Approach

This is another offshoot of the “A Unitarian Universalist Pipeline to the Right?” series, but I’ve decided to put the main series on hiatus for a while, if nothing else because the title is a mouthful.

So, how do we learn to address white fragility, white supremacy, and otherwise offensive and disruptive behavior within congregations? The congregational structure of Unitarian Universalism tends to wall off larger discussions- something upsetting happens in a congregation, it doesn’t travel far. It may end up elsewhere in the form of rumors, but those are not constructive. If a church has to deal with problematic behavior within its own community, an honest, instructive account of what happened is unlikely to appear. This limits the ability of communities to learn from one another, to develop best practices, and to effectively counter instances of white fragility and racially insensitive behavior.

There are many problems with simply publicizing events and providing a timeline of a disciplinary process, or the interactions between disruptive people and marginalized groups. It singles people out. It can re-traumatize and open up not-yet-healed wounds. It stands against principles of privacy and that things said in the confidence of a congregation is kept confidential.

So, is there a way through? I have something to propose.

The Ethnographic Approach

Ethnography is a research method used in multiple academic areas, primarily anthropology and sociology, alongside disciplines that emerged during the social movements of the 1960s and 1970s, like ethnic studies.

Here’s a definition of ethnography that’s pretty good:

Ethnography, emerging from anthropology, and adopted by sociologists, is a qualitative methodology that lends itself to the study of the beliefs, social interactions, and behaviours of small societies, involving participation and observation over a period of time, and the interpretation of the data collected. (source)

Besides a general definition, ethnography as it is performed in developed nations has some best practices:

Information about places, persons, and unique features are anonymized to avoid negative impact and conduct research in an ethical way.
Notes, observations, and interviews are kept stored in standardized ways that limit access and make sure that anonymity is preserved.

An example of a highly-regarded modern ethnographic study is Evicted by Matthew Desmond, a MacArthur grant fellow, about how poor Milwaukee individuals and their families struggled to make rent, dealt with eviction and its consequences, and remained trapped in a cycle of poverty.

While there was great insight, and vivid observations within Evicted, names and places were changed to avoid retaliation from the people followed, in order to have them speak freely.

So, could ethnography be a way for congregations to learn from one another on how to deal with disruptive behavior, and become authentically anti-racist? Good ethnography is a skill to be learned, but it does hold the promise of helping describe how congregations addressed problems- whether formal or informal conflict-resolution measures were used, whether the problem was addressed at lower stages or had to be escalated, and the lasting impact upon the congregation.

Here’s an example of how a Unitarian Universalist ethnography could start:

During a recent winter, Green Hills UU Fellowship, a congregation in the suburbs of mid-sized Midwestern city, had a middle-aged couple (Jane and Joseph) who would use language found to be offensive during the “joys and sorrows” portion of Sunday service. They described conflicts they had with their neighbors, who were families of color, and invoked harmful stereotypes, while raising their voices in a way some felt alarming.

After an informal group of congregants attempted to resolve the issue with Jane and Joseph directly, it was decided that a meeting be held to discuss the Fellowship’s Covenant, and how Jane and Joseph’s actions did not constitute right relations . . .

Would this be helpful to other congregations? I’m not sure, I’ve only recently started going to my current congregation, and have lived in four different areas in five years. But by taking an ethnographic approach, stories of disruptive behavior could be shared with:

Congregations who do not have a covenant of right relations and/or a Disruptive Behavior Policy (DBP), but would like some guidance on the characteristics of effective policies.
Congregations who have found their current policies lacking in some manner, and hope to draft new ones that are more effective.
Congregations currently experiencing a disruptive behavior situation, and wonder how other congregations have addressed it.

Ethnographic accounts could be drafted by lay leaders, perhaps trained at General Assembly or through virtual chat by those with experience. They could be housed at the UUA in a central location where they could be accessed by congregational request.

Would that help? I’m not sure. But I don’t want each congregation to start from scratch in their attempts to be authentically anti-racist and to counter white fragility, congregants using alt-right language, or other actions that target marginalized peoples.

A Unitarian Universalist Pipeline to the Right? V: Covenants and Consequences

This is another in a series, please visit parts one, two, three, and four if you have not, it informs this post.

So, how do we do right by each other? How do we come together in love and have dialogue that’s both honest and affirming? How do we be authentically anti-racist and avoid tokenism and othering?

I mentioned before the trend within Unitarian Universalist communities of Covenants of Right Relations. This extends now into virtual spaces, as the UU Discord server is currently voting on our own Covenant. Online spaces have conditions, like anonymity and the potential presence of trolls and bad-faith actors, that call for a set of precepts that guide our interactions with one another. Every person who’s spent any amount of time online has encountered one, if not many, dysfunctional communities that do not have a membership that treats each other with empathy and compassion. Covenants are a way to construct form in the formless, to have something, like the Earth, that we all return to.

The flip-side of the Covenant, one of the reasons they are formed in the first place and have grown in popularity, is the Disruptive Behavior Policy (DBP). Covenants are a pre-emptive effort to set expectations and define, often through omission, what is unacceptable. There are clear issues of implicit bias and fairness that come when dealing with a disruptive person(s) without guidelines- a democratic congregation is not structured to dispense ad-hoc decisions while staying true to Principle Five, among other Principles and general standards of organizational ethics.

I’m going to outline two potential problem areas in the Covenant-DBP dual systems that might need to be considered if a congregation is developing a Covenant from scratch, adapting a different congregation’s, or updating their own.

Area One: Disruptive Behavior Policies that are too broad and lack a tangible foundation.

Looking at the three problem behaviors outlined on the UUA website.

Dangerous: is the individual the source of a threat or perceived threat to persons or property?

Disruptive: what is the level of interference with church activities?

Offensive: is the behavior likely to drive existing members and visitors away?

These are relatively comprehensive, in that they’re general enough to capture most things a reasonable person (or congregation) would find disruptive. This comprehensiveness is at the expense of guidelines for action. Going back to the UU Pipeline to the Right thesis, we see a very specific type of potentially disruptive behavior. An issue is whether in practice congregational membership and leadership will link the general standards with specific behavior, given the very guided and intentional anti-racist work that has been done at a national and local scale in the past few years.

A parallel can be drawn between this ideal-specific dialectic and Hannah Arendt’s theories on statelessness and human rights. Here’s a quote from a book scanned for a class at Columbia (PDF download warning) on the subject:

Human rights, as developed in the inter-war period during mass deportations and stateless people, applied to humans in a general sense, but in practice applied to no one without citizenship rights. It protected everyone except the most vulnerable. General principles sounded good, but did not actually counter forces of oppression and marginalization.

This ties into the second area of concern.

Area Two: A reluctance to invoke DBP due to the calls for right relations, and a general fear of singling someone out and confrontation more generally.

An empirical question I have for anyone who reads this: if you have a DBP, how often has it been used or referenced in a dispute about someone’s conduct? Now, a DBP never being invoked could be an example of congregational success- the Covenant bringing people back into right relations and productive dialogue. That’s the hope. And I think Covenants are very useful instruments of creating congregational harmony and creating healthy communities.

But the question is: how often is disruptive behavior solved formally, versus informal “solutions”?

Informal solutions include:

An individual or group that feels mistreated by a disruptive person(s) stops attending services and events, or comes less often, or avoids the person whenever possible.
The disruptive person is de facto shunned, without being called into right relations or put through the escalating steps outlined in a DBP. The hope is that they leave on their own, through what is in practice informal, arbitrary coercion.
An ad-hoc group of congregational members have a conversation in which the person(s) most affected by the behavior (who may be socially marginalized and at the receiving end of white fragility or othering behavior) are not consulted. An attempt to warn the person is made in which the affected party is excluded and denied the chance to use the formal policies that exist.

There are, of course, more constructive informal solutions that exist, and it would be a logistical and emotional nightmare to constantly be going through formal channels and referring back to the Covenant and/or the DBP. That being said, what, fundamentally are the consequences of disruptive behavior? And how are those consequences affected by policies that may trend towards the general and avoid concrete behaviors that run counter to UU principles and our community (going back to Area One)?

If this seems like a theoretical approach to the issue, it is. As stated in Part III, there is a fragmentation of UU space, and the odds that you would hear about a disruptive behavior situation at another congregation may be quite low. All communities are not fond of airing the emotional and social tension that may run within. There may be rumors, but how often is the whole process documented and available publicly? It runs into issues of privacy, which then shrouds the impact and efficacy of the policies. It’s probably not reconcilable.

As a sociologist, the preferred path is to anonymize people, places, and organizations. An ethnographer might write about “Green Hills Church” having an disruptive behavior issue, with all people being at the very least referred to by pseudonyms, or even partially fictionalized. This would allow for real-world examples of disruptive behavior and the process of addressing it to be disseminated to other congregations, especially for those without an DBP (or an incomplete one). For controversy in this approach to talking about sensitive issues, read Syed Ali’s “Watching the Ethnographers” in Contexts, it’s pretty short.

So how much do Covenants and Disruptive Behavior Policies actually promote an anti-racist, anti-transphobic, anti-oppressive faith? Can they counter the Pipeline to the Right? It’s a balance of the policies as debated (democratically, hopefully) and codified, and usage in keeping the relations we have with one another vibrant and healthy. Leftists often debate the relation between theory and praxis. The obvious (and in this case, actually correct) response is that the two are inextricably linked. Our theory of how we should relate to one another and affirm each other’s inherent worth and dignity means nothing without the praxis of using policies to promote a faith that liberates and raises up.

A Unitarian Universalist Pipeline to the Right? IV: Anatomy of a Pipeline

This is a follow up to the three previous Pipeline posts- the original, II: Feedback and Insight, and III: Fragmentation and Space.

Up to this point, I’ve been talking about the “alt-right pipeline”, which emerged relatively recently and gained mainstream salience around 2015 with the beginning of Donald Trump’s presidential campaign. However, that is a pipeline, not the pipeline. There is no one pipeline, many have existed throughout the decades. They share common features and can be identified by those features, and several have targeted certain portions of the Unitarian Universalist population.

I’m going to use this post to explore the aspects of a pipeline, how its innocuous surface makes it easy for well-meaning, progressive people to fall down. To do this, I’m going to use an earlier pipeline- the New Atheism pipeline, which transitioned into an anti-Islam and anti-feminist movement over time. Figures in the New Atheist movement like Richard Dawkins were common reading among UUs- the first copy of The God Delusion I saw in print was at my old congregation’s book sale table. Some of the introductory figures weren’t ever reactionary, some became reactionary over time, and some were always reactionary but had some surface level of scientific credential or other traits masking their underlying nature.

The New Atheist pipeline is older than the alt-right pipeline, but they fit together imperfectly, like a kitchen pot with the wrong lid. There are some figures who have figured into both. The New Atheism pipeline is older, but its infrastructure never went away- people everyday are growing up, discovering the works of major 21st century atheists, and being led down the path to intolerance. Compared to the alt-right, which has had many of its key figures and communities banned from major websites and otherwise marginalized, the most salient New Atheists still retain the platform they once had. They continue to publish, appear at conferences, do guest spots on one another’s podcasts.

This is not an exhaustive timeline of New Atheism. For an overview of its key figures and their general argumentative framework about god and belief, the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy has a good overview, as does RationalWiki. We’re speaking of a thread that begins around 2004 (Sam Harris’ The End of Faith) and reached perhaps its greatest salience a couple years later (Harris’ Letter to a Christian Nation (2006); Richard Dawkins’ The God Delusion (2006); Christopher Hitchens’ God is Not Great (2007)). The “movement” goes through multiple phases, eventually ending up at GamerGate- the systematic harassment of female cultural critics like Anita Sarkeesian and Zoë Quinn, starting in 2014 and largely becoming indistinguishable from the nascent alt-right a year later. Some figures remain distinct from the alt-right, some have a foot in each camp, some went straight from being part of one pipeline to another

Edit: A commenter mentioned that New Atheist-minsogynst controversies predate GamerGate by several years, particularly “Elevatorgate” (beginning in July 2011) which involved unwanted sexual advances, convention culture, and the male, cisgender, white demographic dominance within the skeptic community. This also involved Richard Dawkins both dismiss these concerns and in the process say some horrible things about Muslim women. It shows how Dawkins, an entry point in the pipeline, also quickly can pivot to highly regressive opinions, and frequently uses incidents like Rebecca Watson’s story of unwanted sexual advances to instead launch into a rant about Islam.

Here is the general sequence of a pipeline, using commonalities between the New Atheist and alt-right pipelines:

Intellectual figures begin a pivot from areas of their expertise to politics and philosophy. Jordan Peterson, a psychology professor with clinical and teaching experience dating back to the 1990s, suddenly goes from talking about psychology to “free speech” and the right to misgender trans people. He then begins to critique postmodernism, Marxism, and cultural studies, which he has no real background in. Richard Dawkins goes from influential evolutionary scientist with works like The Selfish Gene to talking about religion and the threat of Islamic fundamentalism.
Figures with media and/or academic credibility begin to share the stage with more extreme, polemical individuals, legitimizing them and their ideology. Peterson goes on the Rubin Report. Dave Rubin also interviews far-right British xenophobe Tommy Robinson and “race realist” Stefan Molyneux. Sam Harris has race scientist Charles Murray on his podcast to talk about race and IQ.
An online community gradually moves from the entry point to more extreme content through aggressive targeting by profit-seeking grifters. YouTube videos on a wide variety of subjects (including left-wing and liberal politics!) are preceded by long ads for Dennis Prager’s “PragerU” propaganda outfit, and Ben Shapiro’s show. Shapiro does an ad read for a toothbrush company in the middle of an anti-abortion speech, because his politics and money-making ventures merge into one.
The original point of the movement is lost, and is replaced with right-wing bigotry. New Atheist personalities like thunderf00t stop making videos about Young Earth creationists and start mostly complaining about feminists. Sam Harris talks about Muslim migrants “replacing” white French citizens, which was an influence on the Christchurch shooter’s ideology, gradually replacing religious arguments with “cultural” or racial arguments.GamerGate was ostensibly about “ethics in video game journalism” but from day one was rooted in an attempt to weaponize the internet against women. GamerGate eventually ‘hollowed out’, with only the most unhinged, radicalized people left to carry on the campaign- a split between “true believers” that fell down the pipeline, and the grifters. Carl Benjamin, aka Sargon of Akkad, started in GamerGate, but moved on to Brexit and anti-“SJW” rants when the media attention, and sources of money, shifted.

These may seem like jarring shifts, but taking place over multiple years, the transition can be too gradual to see effectively. Each stage of the pipeline is connected to the next- they share conference appearances, podcast guest spots, promote each other’s books. Thus, an atheist in 2004 could start with The End of Faith, and end up 12 years later hearing Harris give Charles Murray two hours to talk about race science. The God Delusion, sold at the UU congregation I spent five years in, is connected through common platforms to “red pill” anti-feminists and Islamaphobes. Sometimes the transition is a handoff between different people, other times a single person shifts over time. Those that became a fan of an author’s early writings, and retained some attachment to their work, could end up with a much more extreme set of values just by keeping up with the work of Dawkins, or Harris.

New Atheism was launched as a campaign against fundamentalism and irrational conservatism. Its intended audience included many UU humanists and atheists. But key people who helped create the movement eventually flipped all the way around, to become Western chauvinists, Islamaphobes, anti-feminists. Or, sometimes, they were always these things but they had a more innocuous entry point that disguised their underlying ideology.

A Unitarian Universalist Pipeline to the Right? II: Feedback and Insight

Five days ago, I released my first blog post in a long time (a very long time if we’re talking about UU-related content), “A Unitarian Universalist Pipeline to the Right?”. I’ve had one other UU post be as popular as this prior, 2014’s “Remaking Unitarian Universalism: Go big, or go home”. So it’s interesting five years later to see the same viral-like spreading of my post throughout social media. Like before, people I know tell me they’ve read it without me showing it to them. It’s already in their circles.

I could tell that people were reading, based on the slight uptick in blog views in the past few days:

Unfortunately, since UUs predominately use Facebook, most of the shares (and thus comments) of this piece, 37 shares in all, are private and I can’t learn from them or give you any sort of meaningful response to them. I’ve had some listserv messages, blog comments, Facebook messenger contacts, and the UU Discord server. But a lot of what’s been said, I can’t see. I respect their privacy if these conversations wanted to remain hidden, but also if they’re critical comments in particular, I can’t give any sort of apology or explanation here.

Here’s what I’ve learned:

I’m not crazy. People generally agree that a) alt-right language appears in conversations in UU circles, both in real life and online, and b) this is not confined to a few very loud cranks. What I see is the surface of something that happens in many congregations. Since we’re a strongly local-power faith, what the UUA leadership says and the congregational leadership do can be very different.
People are fed up. The alt-right language and citing of people like Jordan Peterson or alt-right pipeline people makes some people really ticked off. The current state of things is not sustainable- I’m reminded of the opening to W.B Yeats’ “The Second Coming:

Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity

This kind of language and conduct cuts across demographics. Seminary students are reading Peterson, older congregants talk down about identity politics, people of all gender identities and sexual orientations are possibly drawn to these arguments. It’s not just about dialogue of a certain group- solutions need to be much more nationally-scaled.

Let me respond to what I think is the one critique I was sent that I think was made in good faith and is not just white fragility manifesting itself. My post was not meant to be ageist, if you felt it was, I’m sincerely sorry. Let me quote myself to show how I think I argue specifically against the ageist explanation:

I think a simple generational model isn’t sufficient. It’s not that older congregants are stuck in the past, and younger congregants have a clearer understanding of anti-racism in 2019. People can learn and evolve, and younger people can inherit older ideas of thinking about anti-racist action from their families or the mainstream narratives in schools and society at large. There’s also a large group of people who are too young to have been socialized in the 1960s, but aren’t millennials and aren’t being socialized now. The end result is a jumble. Pretty much everyone knows that, this isn’t new.

I think a good-faith reading of that indicates a lack of age prejudice. The people specifically calling it ‘ageist’ have bones to pick with me on both religion and politics, so I think it may be more a weapon to win a debate than a substantial critique.

Here are some more solutions that I came up with talking with people about the piece:

Establish covenants of right relations. These covenants establish standards of behavior within a congregation and open opportunities for dialogue, and calling us back to shared values. It also sets definitions and consequences of disruptive behavior. Setting these covenants up before people bring in alt-right rhetoric and its associated harmful actions is preferable to dealing with disruptive congregants ad-hoc, which can lead to the appearance of, or reality of, unfairness.
Establish a more robust UU social media presence. Many congregations record services, either audio or video. Every congregation that records material should publish it, edited well, each week on YouTube and link to it on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. The Church of the Larger Fellowship, the UU Discord, or another group could also use the streaming service Twitch to hold virtual services and religious education. The robust chat service in Twitch rooms allows for people all over the country to join in worship, conversation, and education. It’s also an excellent fundraising platform- a leftist YouTuber named HBomberguy raised $340,000 recently for a trans charity by playing Donkey Kong 64 for over two days.
Decide how to deal with provocative speech that seems to have some sort of right-wing or alt-right definition or nature to it. The Gadfly papers hurricane at General Assembly this year indicates that there are good and bad ways to try to start a conversation about controversial ideas. Had it been written in a different tone, with different vocabulary, and introduced and distributed earlier with more forewarning, I bet it would have been more fully engaged with- rather than the intolerant gunk it turned out to be. Decide as a congregation, if someone comes up using alt-right language, what is the protocol? Is there a committee of communications set up? Is there a person to report to that’s not a minister? How does a congregation determine a) whether such language is alt-right in nature, b) how disruptive it really is, and c) if it could lead to unhealthy action.

These are only a few ideas. If people have further feelings, feel free to tweet at me or DM me on my Twitter (@MackayUnspoken), or join the UU Discord where I’m user “LeftistUU’. I feel that there is a need to have a dialogue that doesn’t concede to the right, and in the process jeopardize our Principles, but also recognizes that people whose language and behavior has negative impacts on communities of color may have good intentions. We have to move beyond intentions, to impact. Because unless the impact is positive, an action cannot be morally defended in a complete way.

Trump and the Luxury of Failure

As expected, even a small sliver of Donald Trump’s tax returns proved to be interesting and infuriating. The rise and fall and rise (and fall, and rise) of Trump serves as a primer on success and failure in America.

The business fortunes of Trump have oscillated from runaway success to total disaster multiple times. However, the situation gravitates towards money- his fortunes are rooted in the money and connections he inherited. Thus, even when his net worth was well below zero, he could act in a way that most broke Americans could never. Failure as a celebrity real estate mogul seems to resemble deferred success. And as his tax returns show, massive loss can be turned into gain. Never mind that most American carry around debt for years, if not their whole lives.

But the ability to fail is in itself a privilege. Many Americans fail once financially, and never return to a place where it could happen again. Hardship is not a short, confined phase in a larger journey, but rather becomes built into the structure of life.

Yet seeing the continuous wave of protests against police violence in cities, it becomes clear that whole population can never fail, for the system has not and will not let them succeed. There is no money for food, childcare, the same benefits that well-off children and their families have. The school system is dysfunctional and higher education is both remote and expensive. Deindustrialization, trade pacts, and outsourcing have stripped communities of decent work with benefits. Reading Matthew Desmond’s Evicted a few weeks back, his case studies lacked the money to both pay rent and do anything else. Kids attended a dozen different schools, grew up more often in the streets than in the home. Hardship was passed down generation to generation.

In America, only the wealthy can succeed and fail like Donald Trump has.

The next Donald Trump

We are now forty days from the 2016 election, and the result is still very much in doubt. The collision of two unpopular, ill-liked candidates has created something approaching competition. On the Wednesday after, talking heads will find their own way of saying “the losing party would have won if they had ran anyone else as their candidate.”

So perhaps we are heading into a Donald Trump presidency. The effects of this, domestically and internationally, are in the air. But one should expect regression and an increase in everyday hostility towards non-whites as a start.

This post is not about the 2016 election. It’s about the next Donald Trump-like candidate to gain a mass following in the United States. And the one after that, going forward into the indefinite future.

A common error in conventional thinking is to mix up structural and particular events. That is, is Trump emerging from a large, stable movement in society, or is he a man with a particular skill set that is not easily replicated? Sociologists like myself think the former explanation is better, while conventional Republicans would like to think the latter is true.

The debate about Trump harkens back to debates about the rise of populists and fascists in the modern world. That is, were Adolph Hitler, Idi Amin, or the Khmer Rogue a special type of evil that is so tied to their being? The unsettling reality, which explains why so many believe that, is that monstrous figures emerge from society. Any political leader or force that has existed can return in a similar form. That means that we, collectively, have the potential to both build and destroy.

Deindustrialization, outsourcing, stagnant wages, underemployment, falling unionization rates, rising healthcare and education costs. All of these, beginning around 1970 and continuing until now, are serious structural forces. They impact a wide swath of society, but for conservative populists, working class whites can be utilized to gain power. Much of the country is at least partly segregated, making racial appeals effective. A massive recession hit the bulk of society head on, and the recovery has only benefitted the rich elite. These days are the crucible of radical politics, which has reached a more complete form on the right, though the Sanders campaign and Jill Stein indicate movement towards the left as well.

Remember that Hitler attempted to seize power first in November 1923 with the Beer Haul Putsch. The Enabling Act, which gave the Nazis unchecked power, came a full decade later. But in that time, the Weimar Republic struggled with hyperinflation, economic stagnation, and political paralysis. The persistence of this particular structure is what made far-right politics possible. As long as crisis reigned, there was always another chance.

And that’s what we should expect going forward from the 2016 election. Structural issues will persist, and a Clinton presidency is not going to solve core economic problems (remember when her husband destroyed welfare and funded prisons instead?) or help communities of color to any meaningful degree. Deadlock in the Senate, demagogues in legislatures across the country. There can always be another Trump. When they come, we should not be surprised.

Privilege in activism: avoiding white monopolization

Criminal is an eclectic, short-form true crime podcast, part of the Radiotopia network of eclectic, short-form podcasts. It’s genuinely a great listen, usually dealing with stories that are local, often in a historical context. The most recent episode, “The Finger”, deals with a white Oregon man who tested the limits of free speech protection by giving every cop he sees the bird.

This episode highlights something that I think is important, if we wish to have healthy social justice activism. The question of how white people fit into Black Lives Matter as a structure is not new- the White Panther Party is proof of that. What “The Finger” represents is a deep double-standard where authorities criminalize speech for marginalized groups, but are indifferent when coming from traditionally dominant ones.

If I decided to flip off every police officer I saw, there would be some consequences. My car would get pulled over more. Small infractions like jaywalking or speeding could get me fined. A cop might even yell at me and be confrontational. And though I can’t say this for sure, I’m relatively confident that I would not suffer bodily harm for my choices. This applies to acts of protest in general. The same action has a fundamentally different meaning depending on who does it. For me, the consequences are real, but limited. For a black person, someone LGBT-identified or undocumented, people have been killed for much less than The Finger.

Recently I read a 2010 paper titled “The achievement gap and the discipline gap: two sides of the same coin?” (PDF). A section talks about how white and black students are disciplined for different acts, despite similar levels of misbehavior.

reasons for referring White students tended to be for causes that were more objectively observable (smoking, vandalism, leaving without permission, obscene language), whereas office referrals for Black students were more likely to occur in response to behaviors (loitering, disrespect, threat, excessive noise) that appear to be more subjective in nature.

The arrest of Sandra Bland was similar to this– based on subjective judgement about “attitude” and “disrespect.” Her minor traffic offense was inflated- despite white drivers doing a similar maneuver all the time. Similar actions, but vastly different consequences.

So that gets back to privilege and protest. I have space that others do not- I can get away with more provocative and militant tactics. The police are more likely to issue warnings before physical confrontation. Authority figures divulge more information around me because they don’t automatically assume I oppose them. This means people with privilege can be the most provocative, visible members of the movement. In the process, it diverts attention away from communities that are under attack by the state.

That’s unfortunate and counterproductive, because one of the most powerful aspects of Black Lives Matter is how dangerous it is to publicly confront the police as a black person in the United States. I can flip The Finger and curse out a police officer, but it doesn’t carry the same meaning.

One line of thought is weaponizing privilege. That is, people with privilege should exploit it to fight for social justice. My critique of white supremacy, the theory assumes, has special meaning because it is a critique of one’s own identity. But at the same time, it feels like things are going in the wrong direction. Privilege used for noble purposes is still fundamentally unjust, and its use cements it within society.

A counter, which after a year and a half around BLM, is that white, male allies are taking leadership positions within the movement when they weaponize privilege. I think that does happen, and I have witnessed it.

Ultimately, I feel my actions should exist within the democratic framework of a movement. That is, not unilaterally using my advantages, but rather offering it as an option should others feel it can be used in some way. White people have a tendency to make decisions personally, and then seek retroactive approval. That’s dangerous and undermines social justice movements. Marginalized groups should have their autonomy acknowledged and respected.

So I choose not to give cops The Finger, because most people cannot. It is important to respect how dangerous activism can be for certain groups of people, and not casually antagonize just because I can get away with it.

Poverty: don’t treat the symptoms, treat the disease

From Chris Rhomberg, sociology professor at Fordham University, is this editorial “We Forgot to End Poverty“. In the season of Toys for Tots, soup kitchens, and in-the-spirit-of-Christmas altruism, it’s important to figure out why the United States still has tens of millions of its people living in poverty. As he writes:

Both sides attempt to “reform” poor parents to push them into the low-wage labor market, but neither side questions the failure of that market to provide families a secure way out of poverty.

Even as unemployment edges downward, millions of Americans remain poor, exposing a basic flaw in the TANF approach: the lack of jobs that pay a living wage.

It comes down to this: there are two ways that welfare ceases to exist. Either poverty is eradicated and people no longer need state assistance, or welfare is gutted or transformed without dealing with structural problems in labor and education. The United States with the bipartisan welfare reform bills in the mid-1990s, assistance was capped and shortened, continuing to shrink in its scope and amount in the past two decades. This would make sense if welfare reform was getting rid of poverty, but it hasn’t. Escaping poverty requires jobs that don’t exist and wages that are not offered- plenty of people in poverty work full-time.

Source: http://www.nj.com/njvoices/index.ssf/2011/09/census_us_poverty_rate_broke_1.html

So policy needs to keep in sight the major social problem. If the goal is to reduce welfare, make it cheaper and more efficient, you can do that. But that requires a narrow view that ignores why welfare exists in the first place. Never lose sight of the core problem. Welfare is the symptom of an underlying illness. To erase welfare does not cure anything, merely remove a way that we are reminded of poverty’s extent and persistence.