Emotions and backlash in US society and politics

A metaphor

Many academic works follow along the lines of the Economist article. Norris and Inglehart’s (2019) Cultural Backlash sees structural changes in the form of urbanisation, higher educational levels, globalisation inevitably producing more and more liberals/progressives with each generation. Although Norris and Inglehart use the metaphor of a shifting of tectonic plates, a metaphor of a boat on a river also works. The river only flows in one direction and the boat floats with the current. Along the way, the boat picks up passengers from the shore. These passengers are increasingly progressive and driven by post-materialist cultural values. At a certain point, those holding conservative values realise they are becoming a minority; a tipping point has been reached. Norris and Inglehart (2019: 460) specify the point when backlash should occur: ‘When a large segment of the population comes to feel they are no longer living in the country in which they grew up, society is in danger of a cultural backlash’. Social conservatives have at least four possible responses as the tipping point is being passed (Norris and Inglehart, 2019: 450). They can shut up and silently continue to ride thus avoiding social sanction; they can continue riding and slowly adapt and accept new norms; they can essentially get off the boat into another smaller boat with like-minded people; they can take out the oars and try rowing in the backward direction (backlash). In this metaphor, the progressives on the boat do not act. They simply get on the boat and ride the river’s current towards its ultimate end. Even though they are co-riders on the boat with the social conservatives, their emotions and attitudes towards those fellow passengers are not important to the backlash phenomenon.

Alter and Zurn’s view does not neatly fit Norris and Inglehart’s teleological approach. First and foremost, they do not posit determinative structural triggers. Second, and related, Alter and Zurn posit a less-deterministic process which could unfold in ways that allow contingent factors, including leadership, to become decisive. Accordingly, they do not envision an obvious end to the process. To continue the river metaphor, for Alter and Zurn the boat could be captured by different pilots and sail off the main river, or it could continue, after some disturbances, to return to its previous course. Third, Alter and Zurn explicitly differentiate ‘retrograde’ from ‘regressive actions’. Retrograde simply means trying to return to a previous condition rather than being pejorative. Alter and Zurn also posit a broader and more complex role for emotions. In the rest of this article, I will argue that Alter and Zurn’s defining criteria of backlash politics cannot be fully understood without understanding the powerful interplay of emotions among ‘progressives’ and ‘retrogrades’. (I will use these terms for each group with the understanding that ‘retrograde’ is not pejorative; I also am using the term ‘progressive’ in its commonly understood meaning in the United States, which differs in some ways from its use in Europe.) The study of this interaction is necessary because key emotions in backlash politics are generated by beliefs about the opposing side’s emotions.

General features of emotion and their importance to backlash

Emotions are important to the creation of a backlash proto-theory because of the ways they shape preference formation, information collection, and belief construction (Petersen, 2017). First, and most fundamentally, emotions are mechanisms that can heighten the saliency of a particular concern. They act as a ‘switch’ among a set of basic desires. Emotion creates an urgency to act on a particular desire; the value of future pay-offs on other preferences is discounted; particular issues can become obsessions. Second, once in place, emotions can produce a feedback effect on information collection. Emotions themselves become powerful experiential information in the appraisal of situations and objects. Third, emotions can affect beliefs. The same individual with the same information may develop one belief under the sway of one emotion and a different belief under the influence of a different emotion.

In Alter and Zurn’s schema, emotions can help transform political discourse and push rejection of dominant social and political scripts. An understanding of the more specific effects of anger shows emotion’s potential power in this process. The cognitive antecedent of anger is that an individual or group has committed a bad action against one’s self or group. The action tendency is to heighten desire for punishment against a specific actor. Under the influence of anger, individuals become ‘intuitive prosecutors’ (Goldberg et al., 1999; Petersen and Zukerman, 2009). That is, individuals tend to specify a perpetrator and then seek retribution. On information collection, anger distorts information in predictable ways, producing attention funnelling. Individuals imbued with anger privilege information that helps specify a perpetrator as well as ways to punish that perpetrator. On belief formation, anger produces several predictable effects critical to mobilisation. The angry person lowers the threshold for attributing harmful intent. Anger enhances the fundamental attribution error – angry people blame humans, not the situation (Keltner et al., 1993). Anger also tends to produce more stereotyping (Bodenhausen et al., 1994). Under the influence of anger, individuals lower their risk estimates and become more willing to engage in risky behaviour (Lerner and Keltner, 2000, 2001).

Resentment follows from the perception that one’s group is located in an unwarranted position on a status hierarchy. Resentment’s effects on preference formation, information collection, and belief formation work in tandem to push the resentful individual to change the status hierarchy.

It is easy to see why anger and resentment are integral to backlash. To return to the river metaphor, in the US case, a common view is that more and more minorities are getting on the boat and taking visible positions. The retrogrades resent the loss of their dominant position in the boat. Resentment produces a strong preference to go back to the previous state; the emotion shapes information collection to see new slights; beliefs are formed about the unfair privileges garnered by the growing groups. Anger, however, will impel an individual to find a perpetrator responsible for the undesired change and seek punishment against that individual. Those responsible for the change should be punished; anger shapes information and beliefs about who should be punished and how. Along these lines, anger’s effects could be readily seen in the ‘lock her up’ chants against Hillary Clinton in the 2016 campaign.

Indignation

The negative emotions of retrogrades have been discussed frequently, if not always in a well-specified way (Beauchamp, 2016; Cramer, 2016). When the qualities, if not emotions, of progressives become the focus of attention, it is usually in terms of how the retrogrades see progressives – as disconnected and arrogant elites. This section outlines how one progressive emotion, indignation, is important in its own right.

What is indignation? ² Indignation is different than anger. Anger stems from cognition that an individual or group has committed a bad action against one’s self or group; the action tendency is to punish that group. Indignation stems from cognition that an individual or group has committed a bad action against a third party. In this definition, indignation requires three types of actors represented by A, B, and C in Figure 1. The As perceive that B has committed bad actions versus actor C. This cognition activates the emotion of indignation in A. Indignation is a complex of emotions: there is a negative emotion towards B and a sympathetic emotion towards C. The action tendency is to sanction B, while allying or helping C.

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Figure 1.

Structure of indignation.

As indicated by the A1–A2 mutual arrows, indignation can also help signal one’s virtuous character to other As through observable forms of the emotion. A1 then receives status benefits from A2. There may be an evolutionary basis for indignation. As argued by Jordan et al. (2016) in a recent article in Nature, ‘People who invest time and effort in condemning those who behave badly are trusted more’. ³ In short, expressing moral outrage can enhance your reputation, and is worth doing so, even if costs are involved.

In its complexity, indignation takes the form of a narrative. There is an implicit story that connects the development of an outside group oriented towards judging the actions of others, the actions of a perpetrator, the impact on a victim, and actions to redress the situation.

Critically for the argument below, there are variations within this narrative based on A’s perception of why B is acting negatively against C. In one variation, A sees B as a normal actor who has simply committed bad actions against C. The resulting emotion is anger, which will fade in time if the action stops or if the perpetrator apologises and makes amends. The second variant of indignation, A sees B not as a normal actor doing bad actions but rather defective in character. In this case, the emotion is contempt, an emotion that follows from cognition that a group or object is inherently inferior or defective. Under the sway of contempt, the individual develops a preference to avoid the perpetrator group, selectively seek information to confirm that groups defective qualities, and reinforce beliefs about the need to confront and isolate the perpetrator. As opposed to the emotions of anger and resentment, contempt tends to produce a situation that is difficult to change as the antagonists work to ostracise and isolate rather than engage their opponent. ⁴

This indignation schema can be readily applied to backlash. The As are the progressives/liberal elites, Bs are the socially conservative or White working class retrogrades, and Cs are various minorities as well as immigrants. The most common version of backlash in the United States connected with the boat metaphor earlier, sees a process starting with the demographic and political rise of the Cs. ⁵ Reacting to their relative loss of status and political power, the Bs then engage in a backlash to undo the gains of the Cs. The A’s indignation is an enlightened reaction against B’s negative actions against the C’s.

An alternative view

In the rest of this article, I will outline a second version of backlash, one highlighting an alternative view of the origins and power of progressive indignation. In the conclusion, I will directly connect this story to Alter and Zurn’s proto-theory found in the conclusion. This story proceeds in four steps. First, As separate from Bs not only in terms of policy preferences, but also in fundamental concepts of national identity. Second, As develop an ‘indignation narrative’ fitting the contours of Figure 1. Third, within the structure of indignation, A’s emotion towards B changes from anger about B’s actions to contempt against B’s character. Fourth, B’s counter A’s contempt with their own contempt against A with ritualised ridicule of A’s indignation narrative. The result is mutual contempt that ignites the changes in public discourse and the extraordinary politics in Alter and Zurn’s theory. In this version, A’s indignation is as much a cause of backlash as it is an effect. Also noteworthy is that, in the US version of this story, the conflict is mainly between mostly White A and B groups and less-connected to the rise of C groups.

We can break down the elements of this story case step by step. The first step is the separation of A and B groups. While many, perhaps most, Americans do not neatly fall into a clear progressive or retrograde camp, generational and structural forces have produced two recognisable and opposing camps. ⁶ Importantly, these two groups become visible to each other in the period leading up to backlash. In the United States, these camps came to diverge on the most fundamental aspects of identity – God and country. To take one example, a recent study found that 56% of Republicans saw being Christian as an important part of being American as opposed to only 30% of Democrats (Sides et al., 2018: 220). Undoubtedly, the most conservative end of the Republican Party and the most liberal wing of the Democratic Party would show an even wider chasm on this issue. In a column entitled ‘In God We Divide: The Political Dimensions of Worship Have Never Been Greater’, Thomas B. Edsall (2020) reviews numerous recent surveys all documenting wide gaps among social groups in religiosity and tying that difference to political affiliation and behaviour. He notes that David Hopkins (2017) in his book Red Fighting Blue finds that voting differences between White evangelical Protestants and religiously unaffiliated voters equals the long-standing differences between Whites and African Americans. The idea that elites in Hollywood and Silicon Valley denigrate Christians has entered the popular culture. To provide one example, the HBO series ‘Silicon Valley’ ran an episode where an entrepreneur is ‘outed’ as a Christian. In the dialogue of the show, one character explains, ‘Here, you can be openly polyamorous and people will call you brave. You can put microdoses of LSD in your cereal and people will call you a pioneer. But the one thing you cannot be is a Christian’. ⁷

Retrogrades see progressives attacking not only God but country as well. A YouGov poll conducted in the summer of 2018 found a 33% gap between Republicans and Democrats on the question of being extremely or very proud to be an American (Rakich and Mehta, 2018). The numbers are even more striking when looking at the related generational divide. One 2019 poll found patriotism to be very important to nearly 80% of those 55 years and older compared to 42% for those 18–38 of age. ⁸

Retrogrades are more likely to have served in the US armed forces or know someone who has served. ⁹ In surveys, they say they are extremely proud or very proud to be an American (Rakich and Mehta, 2018). In much of retrograde America, the American Legion Hall is a key local institution. This organisation’s defining documents indicate its members’ consciousness of a gap between them and progressives. Pillar 3 of the organisation’s four pillars is ‘Americanism’. The opening paragraph of the ‘Americanism’ section clearly outlines a stark conflict with progressives:

The nation’s cultural, moral and patriotic values have been under attack for decades, a disheartening trend that continues today. Prayer has been removed from schools. The U.S. Flag is no longer protected from desecration. The Boy Scouts of America have faced serious legal challenges in some communities they serve. Immigration laws are defied. References to God on U.S. currency, in the Pledge of Allegiance and on public monuments have been challenged by a minority of voices whose vision for America is far different than that of our founding fathers.

With a population of 38 million citizens, California hosts 460 American Legion posts. With a population of 3 million, Iowa is home to 580. ¹⁰

The second step is the development of an indignation narrative by progressives. If progressives have separated themselves from retrogrades by jettisoning the traditional narratives based on God and patriotism, was there a need to develop a new narrative? Undoubtedly there is a significant number of Americans who have developed a ‘live and let live’ philosophy. The alternative backlash story, however, assumes that most human beings would like, if not need, a meaning-producing narrative of national identity. For many progressives in the United States, the restrictive narratives centering on God, patriotism, capitalism, individualism, victories in war and the like should be replaced with the more inclusive narrative celebrating American ‘diversity’. The United States is a land of diversity built on the achievements and contributions of various ethnic groups and the contributions of immigrants. But the narrative evolved. Celebration of diversity led to calls for ‘inclusion’ requiring active measures to bring in minority groups. The basis for the formation of an indignation narrative was born. The progressive As in the schema became angry towards Bs because of exclusionary positions against Cs. The As were angry about the Bs who opposed affirmative action for example.

Now we come to the third step in the story – the further evolution of the indignation narrative. At some point, many As increasingly came to see Bs not as normal actors who were committing callous or ill-informed actions, but as inherently defective actors. In terms of the variants of the indignation narrative, As no longer were angry at Bs actions; rather they became contemptuous of B’s very essence. The goal of inclusion now required an attack on ‘white privilege’. In a further turn, progressives claim the enemy is ‘white supremacy’. In a critical point, a visible and outspoken number of progressives came to believe and say that conservatism is racist (e.g. see Smith, 2010). One major and clearly observable shift can be observed on the gay marriage issue. Not many years ago, this matter was one where people could disagree (note the positions of Clinton and Obama). During a short period of time, many progressives came to view opposition as evidence of inherent bigotry. Along the lines of contempt, dissenters from the pro-gay marriage position were condemned and ostracised.

Whether the progressive attack on White supremacy and related lines is justified or accurate or necessary is not the focus for this article. For understanding backlash, the issue is whether the use of labels associated with contempt is likely to bring on a negative counter-reaction. The term ‘white supremacy’ is a loaded one, conjuring the Ku Klux Klan and other racist organisations. Although this is a topic for further study, it seems likely that the Bs in the indignation schema perceive the A’s use of this term, when directed at them, as a means to show contempt, trigger shame, and exclude.

The fourth step simply holds contempt on one side often leads to retaliation in kind. If members of group B perceive that members of group A see them as contemptible, the natural reaction is meet contempt with contempt. A situation which leads us directly back to the present period of backlash.

There is one more possible final step in the process – the institutionalisation or ritualisation of indignation and mutual contempt. The United States has a history of social conservatives railing against elites who are perceived to favour minorities over the White working class. Dating back decades, the whole concept of ‘limousine liberal’, fits the indignation narrative well (Fraser, 2016). Alter and Zurn’s backlash concept is based on the idea that a certain threshold has been reached that makes backlash politics more than a fad. This threshold is likely to be passed when the emotions take concrete form. For example, a popular knitting club, ‘Ravelry’, recently banned Trump supporters with the justification that ‘We cannot provide a space that is inclusive of all and also allow support for open white supremacy . . . Support of the Trump administration is undeniably support for white supremacy’. ¹¹ When even online knitting clubs constrain members’ participation on political grounds rooted in White supremacy, indignation would seem to be firmly rooted. On the other side, popular news sources, most famously Fox News, regularly put out semi-ritualised attacks against ‘social justice warriors’, the ‘outrage industry’, and other perceived carriers of progressive indignation and contempt.

Politics

There is, of course, the question of how much the retrograde’s contempt of progressive indignation is based in perception versus reality. Democratic leaders, however, have provided fuel for the retrograde’s fire. Space only permits inclusion of the most famous example. Candidate Hillary Clinton could not have provided better evidence of an elite indignation narrative with a heavy contempt element than she did with her ‘basket of deplorables’ speech. Clinton held many fund-raising events in August in the Hampton’s and Martha’s Vineyard, where she reportedly commonly used the ‘deplorables’ imagery. ¹² The ‘deplorables’ speech was made at Cipriani’s on Wall Street with seats going for US$1200–US$10,000. Along the lines of the indignation narrative, Clinton began her speech to the largely gay audience by saying, ‘You know, I’ve been saying at events like this lately, I am all that stands between you and the apocalypse’. The event certainly fit the indignation narrative schema of an ‘enlightened’ elite saving the endangered minority from a contemptible White group. It is difficult to imagine that this speech was not going to draw a negative counter-reaction. In fact, ‘deplorables’ has become an integral word and concept in the US political culture.

In June 2020, Presidential Candidate Joe Biden, in a virtual town hall stated:

There are probably anywhere from 10 to 15 percent of the people out there that are just not very good people. But that’s not who we are. The vast majority of people are decent. We have to appeal to that. ¹³

For Clinton, the percentage of deplorables could be estimated at 20%–25% (half of Trump supporters), while for Biden the percentage is only 10–15. In any event, it seems natural for Democratic/progressive candidates to estimate a number of inherently bad actors along the lines of the indignation narrative.

These observations bring up a major point about backlash and electoral politics. Potential voters who perceive themselves as Bs in the As’ indignation narrative are not likely to vote for progressive candidates. Self-identified Bs, embracing a ‘deplorable’ label, will meet contempt with contempt and mobilise around the candidate who best appeals to retrogrades. The theory developed in this article works towards a hypothesis: the larger the B category (individuals perceiving the contempt of As) the higher the chance of backlash.

As Alter and Zurn emphasise in their framework, the size of the backlash does not necessarily determine the political outcome of backlash. Even in the theory here, the numbers of the indignant may increase more than those acting on backlash. In effect, while the number of Bs may increase, the number of As might increase more. Furthermore, it might be that higher numbers of backlash activated retrogrades produce a threat that drives moderates over to the progressive side.

Despite these uncertainties, many progressive strategists wish to prevent widening the scope and the numbers involved in backlash. Before the 2016 elections, ‘The Democratic Strategist’ devoted an entire issue to regaining support among White working class Americans. As summarised by Andrew Levison in the aforementioned document:

Democratic Narratives are easily ridiculed as the product of ‘limousine liberals’ and Democratic candidates easily scorned as elitists. Even the most exquisitely polished candidate, platform, and narrative cannot succeed if it is not linked to grass-roots institutions and advocates in the everyday working life of white working class America. ¹⁴

Backlash is not inevitable. Politics matter. The Democratic strategy in the 2018 mid-term elections appeared to do all it could to focus on specific issues of health care and economics to avoid the emotional dynamite connected to backlash. Despite his comment mentioned earlier, Joe Biden appeared to be the best positioned of the Democratic presidential candidates to avoid setting off backlash politics, perhaps the reason he was nominated.

Conclusion

To finish, I will address Alter and Zurn’s Proto-Theory of Backlash Politics found in their conclusion to this symposium. In this article, I have tried to unpack one small part of their schema. In Alter and Zurn’s framework, social shaming (real or perceived) can lead to emotional spirals. I have showed how the complex emotion of indignation can unite concepts of shaming, anger, and contempt at the centre of the Alter and Zurn’s framework. I have tried to uncover the dynamic processes where these emotive elements, frequent companions to backlash, play out.

Alter and Zurn’s framework also directs us to consider when political responses are effective in quelling backlash and when those responses are ineffective. The analysis here explains the origin of one group essential to backlash politics, the Bs who react to perceived contempt with contempt of their own, and suggests that the size of this group is an important, if not determinative factor. Indeed, the analysis suggested reasons why the size of the group might not be determinative.

This article also agrees with Alter and Zurn in that emotions alone cannot define backlash. They are ‘companions’ to the central phenomenon, although there needs to be a debate on their relative power and effects. This article has shown, however, how crucial and complex those effects are.

Despite this complexity, some commonalities concerning emotions and backlash can be found among the contributions in this volume. Clearly, my argument resonates with Jack Snyder’s article, despite his focus on international politics and mine specifically on US domestic politics. Snyder (this volume) states, ‘when wielded by cultural outsiders in ways that appear to condemn local social practices, shaming is likely to produce anger, resistance, backlash . . . Shaming can easily be interpreted as a show of contempt’. I hope to have added value to this reasoning through discussion of the emotion of indignation. As a construct, indignation requires specification of the relationship among multiple social groups in a society (the A, B, and C actors in the schema above); it requires an explanation of the transformation of anger into contempt; it predicts a dynamic process in which perceived contempt on one side leads to mutual contempt on two sides. On another point, as seen in the quoted passage earlier, Snyder’s chain of events starts with the actions of a ‘cultural outsider’. Here, I have provided a brief historical explanation of how progressives, through diverging views of core meaning-producing institutions of God and country, have become ‘cultural outsiders’ to retrogrades.

Finally, a caveat is in order. In this article, I have tried to untangle the difficult to discern backlash dynamics among largely White political groupings. It should be emphasised that politics related to demographic change and perceptions of racial status changes and reversals are clearly essential parts of US politics and backlash. I have directly and thoroughly addressed the status change and the emotion of resentment elsewhere.