Ideology & Outrage (repost)
Old Facebook comments from 5/2017:
Outrage
I think ideology is based on outrage. We like to feel righteous outrage, and we pick our ideology according to the thing we most like to be outraged about. The ideology then tells us that that thing is everywhere.
Examples:
Libertarians: Outraged by abuse of power, especially by the government. Ideology says: Practically everything is an abuse of power!
Populists: Outraged by foreigners getting the better of one’s own country. Ideology says: We’re losing to China, we’re losing to Mexico, we’re about to be taken over by Islamic extremists!
Feminists: Outraged by men oppressing women, whites oppressing blacks, etc. Ideology says: Oppression is everywhere! Practically everyone is a racist, sexist, homophobe, etc.!
Everyone: Outraged by people with opposing ideologies. Ideologies say: Our opponents are constantly winning and implementing their evil ideas!
Ideology Is a Sucker
Q: What do feminists and Trump supporters have in common? Lots of things. Both are humans, both are mostly ideologues, both will hate this question. Also, both of them are easily scammed. That’s because ideology makes people suckers.
How to scam an ideologue: tell them a story that fits their narrative about society and plays into their stereotypes. Examples:
(1) To scam a feminist, tell them a story about being a minority oppressed by white men. As in:
The Duke Lacrosse case (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duke_lacrosse_case)
The Rolling Stone case (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Rape_on_Campus)
(2) To scam a populist, tell them a story about foreigners and your political opponents harming America; promise to stop it if you are given power. As in:
The story about thousands of people in New Jersey celebrating the 9/11 attack (http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2015/nov/22/donald-trump/fact-checking-trumps-claim-thousands-new-jersey-ch/)
The story about Florida Democrats voting to impose sharia law (http://www.politifact.com/florida/statements/2014/may/08/blog-posting/florida-democrats-just-voted-impose-sharia-law-wom/)
(3) To scam a libertarian, I assume you would tell them a story about how you’re being oppressed by the state. I don’t know of any high-profile cases of this; perhaps it’s not worth it to scam libertarians, since they don’t have enough power.
In the cases cited above, people believed the false stories because they fit ideological stereotypes. E.g., in the Duke Lacrosse case, the Lacrosse team was assumed guilty (Duke faculty in particular rushed to judgment: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Group_of_88) because the accused were white men and the alleged victim a black woman. The same sort of thing was going on with the Trump-like fake news stories.
Recommendation: Identify your ideology’s distinctive narrative. Make room in your belief system for the possibility of people trying to take advantage of your beliefs for personal gain. Even if people of type X are doing a lot of bad things to people of type Y, that doesn’t mean that every story that fits that pattern is true.