Michael DeMoor: Attend to your own nuts

We’re prepared by attribution biases to see the “wackos” in the orbit of an out-group as typical of that whole group, while forgiving our own outliers.

By: Michael DeMoor

Much of what goes on in a Parliament is a kind of courtly ceremony. Some of those ceremonies enact a show of unity, as when both the PM and the Leader of the Opposition take the newly elected Speaker in hand and drag him to the Speaker’s Chair. But the theatrical agonism of Question Period also has a kind of ceremonial character most days; the standing ovations, the heckles, the belly laughs at half-baked (and thoroughly scripted) quips are all rote moves in an elaborate, but very familiar, game.

Though the ceremonies of QP are largely done for the sake of the cameras and the evening news, it’s all so familiar that what happens on the floor of the House is rarely actually headline-worthy. Not so on late last month, when the Pierre Poilievre was ejected for using unceremonious (or, rather, “unparliamentary”) language, calling Prime Minister Justin Trudeau a “wacko” and an “extremist.” This was occasioned by remarks by the PM that Poilievre was flirting with “extremism” by encouraging an anti-carbon tax convoy, being photographed emerging from a trailer marked by the logo of Diagolon (an online community whose members cheer on the possibility of governmental collapse).

This is only the latest in extended political efforts by both party leaders to associate the other in the public mind with extremism. In this, they get a boost from some pretty well-established characteristics of our social psychology. “Attribution biases” refer to a range of tendencies to fail to be rational or consistent in the ways in which we attribute intention, meaning or significance to the behaviours of different actors.

For instance, if I cut someone off in traffic, I explain that by “situational” factors (it’s really busy, or I’m unusually stressed), whereas I’ll likely explain the same action by a stranger as reflecting “dispositional” factors (“that person is a careless jerk”). If that other person seems to be a member of an “out-group” (say, if they seem to be the supporter of a political party that I dislike) this tendency can be amplified since it seems to me that I have further evidence that they’re a careless jerk (not only do they suck at driving, but they also vote for those bastards).

When it comes to the specter of extremism, then, we’re prepared by these attribution biases to see the “wackos” in the orbit of an out-group as typical of that whole group, but to explain away the “wackos” or wackiness in my own political orbit. When we do this consciously it’s come to be called “nutpicking,” but politicians know that we’re pre-reflectively disposed to go in for this, and they have a significant interest in exploiting that fact.

Most of us think that we’re pretty reasonable and moderate, so we are repulsed from associating ourselves with extremism. If they can get us to associate their opponents inseparably with their extremists (their “nuts,” if you will), politicians can benefit from that repulsion. And, in a social media era when we are not just passive consumers of political opinion but also broadcasters of it, the benefits of that repulsion are, in many cases, not just our votes but our voices, too.

What’s more, it feels great! If Pierre Poilievre represents an out-group for you, seeing him confirm your suspicions about his sympathy for accelerationist right-wing nihilists probably triggered some serious serotonin release, even if your public reaction was a disappointed head-shake and some cluckings of the tongue.

But here is the key question in light of all of this: Once we recognize that we have these attribution biases, that our leaders have an interest in exploiting them, and that we are (often eagerly) complicit in that exploitation, what do we do with that recognition?

We could lean into it. We could accept it as the way of the (political) world and the only path to the defeat of our enemies and the victory of the good. But this kind of cynical embrace of our less rational tendencies can be a self-fulfilling prophecy. When we treat out political adversaries as if they are all of a kind with their most radical elements, those radicals get empowered and sometimes take over. We need only to look south and rightward to see how this can happen. Let’s have as little part in that as we can.

The high-minded political theory answer to the question is that we should strive for discursive reciprocity. We should refuse to apply to our adversaries standards that we do not apply to our friends. If I refuse to accept that extremists in my camp are typical of the whole, I should refuse to think the same of the relationship between you and your nuts. But reciprocity cuts against the grain of our inclinations, so to develop the knack of it we need to put in some serious work on ourselves (individually and collectively).

On the one hand this means that we have to keep our own team accountable for not indulging these inclinations about the other team. On the other hand, it means that we have to work to not make it easy for our enemies to exercise them on us; we need to be responsible for our own nuts, making it clear both internally and externally that it’s the sensible people who are driving the bus in our party. So the high-minded political theorist in me suggests that we should spend less time associating our opponents with their nuts and more time dis-associating ourselves from our own.

But here’s the thing: that’s good and wise advice largely if we assume that extremism is distributed evenly across the political spectrum. Although there are certainly radicals on all sides, the “extremists” (which I take to mean those who refuse or actively undermine the basic rules of the game of democratic citizenship/governance) are driving the bus in one party south of the border, but not in the other. That needs to be said and said emphatically regardless of whether those nuts are your own nuts. Maybe we have a more even distribution of extremists (and hopefully fewer of them) than our southern neighbours, but that’s not guaranteed to be the case. It’s certainly possible for those who drive us toward democratic backsliding to play roles of outsized influence in some political camps, but not in others.

We need to attend to our own nuts, practice reciprocity, and still tell the truth. There’s no simple recipe for that; being a citizen in a democracy is hard work, it might even be a spiritual discipline. “Know thyself” and be responsible with and for what you know.

Michael DeMoor is dean of social science and associate professor of social philosophy at The King’s University in Edmonton.

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