Fearing fear itself

FDR was right, mostly. Fear is not the only thing we have to fear. We also have the coronavirus, plus the economic and social disruptions it precipitated. But fear itself is insidious, like the virus, and just as contagious.

FBI background checks for gun sales hit a record high in June, Fred Kaplan writes at Slate. Many of those were first-time buyers. Along with the rise of militias and virulent rhetoric propagated via cable TV and social media, gun sales are among the signs that led David Kilcullen, a scholar on insurgencies, to conclude America is in a state of “incipient insurgency,” defined as the “organized use of subversion and violence to seize, nullify, or challenge political control” of an area.

Kaplan explains:

Kilcullen argues that this is what we’ve been seeing the past few months in the waves of provocations and street violence that have blown through American cities since the May 25 police killing of George Floyd. By and large, the protesters haven’t been at fault. It’s been the extremists—left and right—who have tagged alongside the protests and counterprotests, exploiting the disorder.

More interesting is what drives the extremists:

Kilcullen sees a pattern similar to the patterns that precipitated insurgencies in Colombia, Libya, and Iraq. The key factor is the rise of fear. He cites Stathis Kalyvas’ book The Logic of Violence in Civil War as observing that fear, not hate, drives the worst atrocities. “Every civil war and insurgency of the last 50 years has been driven by fear,” Kilcullen told me. Today’s politics and social tensions are dominated by three fears: fear of other social groups, fear that those other groups are encroaching on one’s territory, and fear that the state no longer has the ability to protect the people.

We have seen this before. Discrimination against Irish immigrants is family lore. But as far down the social ladder as they were in the mid-nineteenth century, like poor Whites in the South, at least they were not Black. Leslie M. Harris explains “In the Shadow of Slavery: African Americans in New York City, 1626-1863” (caveat: language):

Increasing support for the abolitionists and for emancipation led to anxiety among New York’s white proslavery supporters of the Democratic Party, particularly the Irish. From the time of Lincoln’s election in 1860, the Democratic Party had warned New York’s Irish and German residents to prepare for the emancipation of slaves and the resultant labor competition when southern blacks would supposedly flee north. 

[…]

In the month preceding the July 1863 lottery, in a pattern similar to the 1834 anti-abolition riots, antiwar newspaper editors published inflammatory attacks on the draft law aimed at inciting the white working class. They criticized the federal government’s intrusion into local affairs on behalf of the “ni**er war.” Democratic Party leaders raised the specter of a New York deluged with southern blacks in the aftermath of the Emancipation Proclamation. White workers compared their value unfavorably to that of southern slaves, stating that “[we] are sold for $300 [the price of exemption from war service] whilst they pay $1000 for negroes.” In the midst of war-time economic distress, they believed that their political leverage and economic status was rapidly declining as blacks appeared to be gaining power.

That should sound familiar. Then there were racist Democrats and newspaper editors. Amidst the coronavirus pandemic, Black Lives Matter, and anti-police violence protests today we have social media, right-wing talk radio, Fox News, and Donald J. Trump stoking fear.

“People weigh their well-being relative to those around them,” Sean McElwee wrote in 2015. “There is strong evidence that whites often oppose actions against inequality because of ‘last place aversion,’ the desire to ensure that there is a class of people below oneself.”

Race and ethnicity in America are ready shorthands for class. While racial animosity is strongly associated with the incipient insurgency Kilcullen sees, the real fear runs deeper than race, especially among White nationalists.

The liberal charge that poor whites vote against their economic best interests is not only smug and condescending, it misunderstands them entirely. President Lyndon Johnson understood that when he told Bill Moyers, “If you can convince the lowest white man he’s better than the best colored man, he won’t notice you’re picking his pocket. Hell, give him somebody to look down on, and he’ll empty his pockets for you.”

Preserving their social status among what Adam Serwer calls the “aristocracy of race” is worth more than financial benefit. Voting for “equalizing” programs that give others a leg up — especially those they perceive as lower on the ladder — challenges their social status, and they will have none of that even if it helps them too. The very idea that Black Lives Matter as much as theirs is a mortal threat to their social status. They will take up arms to preserve that order.

Kaplan continues:

Trump’s aim is to incite fear—fear of violence, disorder, change—and to paint himself as the bastion of law and order. It’s an odd tactic for an incumbent president, and it’s unclear whether the ploy is working. But, as Kilcullen and Kalyvas point out, he’s right about the fear’s potency. And the first violent incidents can spark a self-reinforcing cycle of violence, retaliation, and retaliation for that. “It doesn’t matter what the original grievance is,” Kilcullen says. “It becomes self-sustaining.”

Kilcullen does not believe insurgency is inevitable yet. A “pre-McVeigh moment,” Kilcullen dubs it.

Serwer reviews the history of Reconstruction and white backlash and concludes this moment in history may be different. “This time I know our side will win,” as Victor Laszlo might say. Serwer concludes:

There has never been an anti-racist majority in American history; there may be one today in the racially and socioeconomically diverse coalition of voters radicalized by the abrupt transition from the hope of the Obama era to the cruelty of the Trump age. All political coalitions are eventually torn apart by their contradictions, but America has never seen a coalition quite like this.

History teaches that awakenings such as this one are rare. If a new president, and a new Congress, do not act before the American people’s demand for justice gives way to complacency or is eclipsed by backlash, the next opportunity will be long in coming. But in these moments, great strides toward the unfulfilled promises of the founding are possible. It would be unexpected if a demagogue wielding the power of the presidency in the name of white man’s government inspired Americans to recommit to defending the inalienable rights of their countrymen. But it would not be the first time.

But transformation will mean more than tinkering around the edges of police reforms and whatnot. Deeper, more structural reforms are required for a new Reconstruction to take hold. That will depend on whether the Democratic Party in the 21st century is up to the task and on how well Trump’s campaign of fear succeeds.

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