“I help my own family first, and by extension, the nation and the people. Then I can start helping people from other parts of the world, but not right now: Right now I have to help my own people of Sweden. Swedes are too naive and always pity others, but you can’t help the entire world right now.”
The easy way of dealing with people who support Drumpf, and similar people the world over, is to ignore them, mock them. The harsh truth is that they are winning. Prior to the 2016 U.S. election, my sister rather giddily shared the demographic information that was supposed to be Hillary's key to winning. The emerging majority in America is non-white. The white people who aren't happy about it, we will just drag them along kicking and screaming. There is some valid mentality here. Progress always marches with reactionary opponents. But once it arrives, people largely let it in and move on. In 2004, people around the U.S. flocked to the ballot box in opposition to gay marriage. In 2017, gay marriage is the law of the land. Ten years ago... hell, probably five years ago, it felt unthinkable that it would be legal throughout the United States. The belief is that people are slowly going to realize that living in a world where gay people can legally marry is not the end of the world, life will go on just fine. The belief prior to the election seemed to be that we can approach the increasing non-white population the same way. They will vote overwhelmingly for Democrats and the progressive march forward would carry on, leaving the angry whites increasingly crying on the margins until they join the 21st century or die out.
Well, the results are in, and the angry whites aren't content to go quietly into that good night. The Republican party now dominates U.S. politics and things do not look any better elsewhere in the world. Years of ignoring them, mocking them on The Daily Show and other TV shows, and, now, sucker-punching and "no-platforming" them has lead them to all the levers of power. It might be time to try a different tactic:
"The right response is to ask ourselves, why are we failing to organize these people?"
-Noam Chomsky
Chomsky's point is that a lot of working class people have legitimate grievances, but they are being given the wrong answers about why those grievances exist. It is our fault for failing to hoist a movement that offers them better answers.
Sadly, exactly how to build such a movement is a difficult question. I think the Bernie Sanders campaign offered some glimpse that a "socialist" (or "new deal") platform can resonate deeply with a lot of people. I took part in an attempt to unionize my workplace a couple years ago and was surprised to find how many people who favored unionization would otherwise espouse right-wing, tea-party-esque political views. It is sad that a union campaign wasn't enough to reach them on a political level, but it at least showed that a populist, working-class-oriented organization (which should be left-wing) could resonate with right-wing, working-class people.
In general, just finding ways to talk to people is important. I take this from my own personal experience- I've had productive conversations with many people who have opposing political views. Admittedly, I do not believe I've ever actually changed anyone's minds, but I've repeatedly heard people tell me I make good points, or I've made a particular point and gotten them to say, "I agree with that," I once had a long conversation at an Iraq War protest with a counter-protester (someone who supported the war so much that he was motivated to show up at the protest to mock the protesters), and we actually had a friendly conversation and he told me I was a smart guy who would do just fine. I debated the existence of God once on the air with a Christian radio talk-show host. It was at the the Minnesota State Fair in 2004, outdoors, and at the end of our discussion, we shook hands and received a round of applause from listeners who had gathered throughout the discussion, most of them wearing Bush/Cheney stickers.
I feel self-aggrandizing in discussing these things, but my point is that productive discussion is very much possible, and people do change.
The best way to win people to your cause is to give them a warm place to come to, derision, punching, ignoring, unfriending, and otherwise trying to shut people down doesn't do that. I understand there are particular times and contexts in which pacifist action is not in one's self-interest. Chomsky himself, who advocates listening to most tea-partiers, wrote that "[i]t is very difficult to retain a faith in the “essential humanity” of the SS trooper or the commissar or the racist blinded with hate and fear." What he was saying, though, was that in an extreme condition where one is so blinded by hate that they pose an immediate, present threat to your physical well-being, perhaps your life, you should not remain a pacifist in that moment. It is nearly certain that Chomsky would not oppose the victims of Dylan Roof's massacre if they started shooting back, for example. But that is an extreme circumstance where the physical threat is immediate.
The left in 2017 has been cheering its success in punching Richard Spencer in January and "no-platforming" Milo Yiannopoulos in Berkley. It should be noted, though, that Spencer's profile has in no way diminished since receiving his sucker-punch, nor has his movement, and Milo was profiled on Tucker Carlson's TV show and Bill Maher's, and in publications like Bloomberg news, after being "no-platformed" in Berkley. Meanwhile, The Daily Show, The Colbert Report, and, more recently, Last Week Tonight with John Oliver and SNL, and other shows have been popular mainstays of comedy mocking the right-wing for well over a decade now, and here we are with the right-wing firmly in power in the United States and the world.
Our team needs to grow, and we need people from other side to succeed. In summarizing the message he received from talking with 100 Drumpf supporters, Sam Altman wrote:
“You all can defeat Trump next time, but not if you keep mocking us, refusing to listen to us, and cutting us out. It’s Republicans, not Democrats, who will take Trump down.”
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