The Problem of Adversarial Politics - Bullying as a modus operandi.
a brief overview
Adversarial dynamics and struggles for power tend towards bullying as an underlay for the flooring of 'debate' - the point is to win, rather than to arrive at an accurate understanding that informs and reassures all involved.
"In good conversation, there is neither victor nor vanquished - there is only better informed and reassured participants."
https://www3.gmu.edu/programs/icar/ijps/vol1_1/Burton.htm
"The party political system is historically adversarial. It evolved out of past feudal landlord and commoner confrontations.
It became even more politically divisive with industrialization.
It retained consensus support and remained viable as long as its authorities were in effective control.
The hierarchie's political adversaries and grass roots activists could be criminalised and exiled. Poverty and poverty based crime could be contained by criminalising the impoverished, building more jails and by 'transportation' of the convicted poor and many more impoverished people as indentured workers to build colonies on foreign lands, at the expense of the native peoples.
But with communications that help to establish a separate culture for the under privileged, and with the availability of weapons, effective control of the alienated became ever more difficult.
With economic growth in industrialisation and their democracies there has evolved a dominant middle class. Its members have no desire to be caught in the cross fire of any historical we-they confrontation.
The press, radio and television and, more recently, social media have brought to its attention the absurdities of party political debate as a decision making process.
Furthermore, the members of the dominant `capital' and `labour' parties are now seen to be in conflict largely for personal career reasons, not because of policy differences.
There is a growing consensus that the problems civilization face must be tackled by less adversarial processes in which analysis and reason prevail."
Political Grooming and 'wedge' politics are designed to exacerbate the adversarial dynamics.
Use of dehumanising language targeted the perceived adversaries and marginalised groups within society is evident everywhere.
The 10 stages of Genocide - Sprouts Schools
The term 'sheeple' is a good example of that process, in that it inspires a sense of superiority among those who would use the term to describe others, who are deemed inferior.
We are all familiar with political and vernacular use of the words animal, cockroach, rat, vermin, monster, ape, snake, infestation, parasite, alien, savage and 'hate marches' as weapons.
The lack of humane understanding, the lack of empathy and the reliance on incomplete or inaccurate 'information' bias and curated bigotry are all stimulated by the term 'sheeple'.
This is one example familiar to me within my own situation and I cite it here because so many among my contemporaries, left and right, feel it is fine to use that term. I have always been appalled by that term.
I find that when I challenge it, I experience push back, dismissal and derision and an unwillingness to explore the meaning of use of such terms.
'Sheeple' is no less dehumanising than 'towel heads' or 'faggots' or 'dykes' or any number of similar terms.
Debate or Discourse?
Adversarial dynamics and struggles for power tend towards bullying as a underlay for the flooring of 'debate' - the point is to win, rather than to arrive at an accurate understanding that informs and reassures all involved.
"In good conversation, there is neither victor nor vanquished - there is only better informed and reassured participants."
How bullying works: projection and scapegoating.
Written by Kitty S Jones
https://politicsandinsights.org/2015/01/22/how-bullying-works-projection-and-scapegoating/
"Very few people, when put to the test, have the integrity and moral courage to stand up against bullying, harassment, abuse, threats and corruption. The targets of adult bullying are selected often because they DO have the moral courage to challenge; many people will pass by on the other side.
A target of adult bullying is most often chosen because of their strength, not their weakness. Research shows that targets of bullying tend to have highly developed empathy, and sensitivity for others, a high degree of perceptiveness, high moral values, a well-developed integrity, a strong sense of fair play and reasonableness, a low propensity to violence, a reluctance to pursue grievance, disciplinary or legal action, a strong forgiving streak and a mature understanding of the need to resolve conflict with dialogue.
Often, targets of bullying are independent, self-reliant and “different” in some way. Weak people often disingenuously confuse these hallmarks of character with weakness.
Bullies aim to inflict psychological injury more often than physical injury. Their main aim is to control, discredit, isolate and eliminate their target.
The word “victim” also allows disingenuous people to tap into and stimulate other people’s misconceptions and prejudices of victimhood which include the inference that the person was somehow complicit in the abuse. (See just-world fallacy and victim-blame narrative).
I use the word “target”, which is also accurate because bullying involves the intentional singling out of a person or group for abuse.
Bullies, who have no integrity, are vindictive, aggressive, demanding, and regularly violate others’ boundaries; displaying aggression does not respect peoples’ rights, and a bully’s “requests” come with a negative consequence if the course of action demanded by the bully is declined.
A bully’s bad behaviour is entirely his or her responsibility, they intend to cause their targets harm, to undermine them and damage them socially, emotionally, psychologically and sometimes, physically. And they often do."
Corbyn - making an example
Jeremy Corbyn and the false anti-Semitism, ‘friend of terrorists’, ‘communist spy’, ‘protest politician’ and ‘he’s unelectable’ charges laid against him present a recent and very well documented example of this dreadful behavioural dynamic. It’s sole purpose was to prevent a genuinely honest politician with a track record for integrity, honesty, empathy and a good understanding of the issues facing the body politic and society at large from gaining the position of Prime Minister, with a majority in the House of Commons.
That bullying campaign was perpetrated within the Labour Party by a group who were aligned with Blairism (and its wars) and this was replicated throughout the News Media and online, through social media micro targeting campaigns, funded and supported by those concerned with Wealth Extraction and their power to protect Wealth Extraction from accountability for the avoidable harms it refuses, repeatedly, to avoid.
Healthy Governance - avoiding avoidable harms.
The function of a healthy governance system is to maintain and support the population in living well and at peace.
Part of that process is the deployment collective resources to avoid avoidable harm and to prevent preventable harms.
There are harms that cannot be avoided and there are harms that can be avoided.
War can be avoided. War can be prevented.
However as we see, again and again War is not avoided and we know too well that within war the murder of civilians and the destruction of civil infrastructure which form the essentials for ‘living well’ - schools, health care facilities, housing, roads, utilities - which are the basic human right of a civilian population caught in the crossfire of warfare - tends not to be avoided, more often than not by conscious choice. The destruction is intentional, not accidental.
Collateral Damage : A euphemism designed to throw a veil over the realities of warfare.
We cannot stop a violent hurricane from causing destruction - we can however build infrastructure designed to withstand the impact of such natural catastrophes. We could deploy resources to protecting the affected people’s welfare, supporting them in the recovery process.
Resilience
Rather than raw personal human resilience, we could choose to build in resilience as an infrastructure policy and thus offer more effective and efficient support for the people made vulnerable by the storm.
Likewise, regards Climate Disruption, we cannot stop the process underway because it is the result of a few centuries of build up of Carbon Dioxide and other pollutants into the atmosphere that will take centuries to reverse. We can reduce or stop further pollution yet the effect of such action will take decades to be felt.
What we can do is design resilience into infrastructure, social care, wealth sharing, aid systems and so on to offer best support and protection of the people made most vulnerable by Climate Disruption - that would be a matter of avoiding avoidable harms in the near, medium and long term.
Bullying in politics is lethal.
Bullying in politics undermines all these objectives and more by at attacking the proponents of equitable industrial, social and economic policy as a method of defending the status quo, a status quo born of adversarial violence as described in the beginning of this piece.
Corneilius
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