Monday, January 22, 2018
Elder of Ziyon
I’ve recently read So You’ve Been Publically Shamed by
British journalist Jon Ronson which looks at a reemergence of public shaming,
one where it is the Internet serves as the judge sentencing others to the
stocks, the stocks themselves, and the mob throwing rotten fruit at the stocked
defendant.
One of the reasons such shaming has snuck up on us in
today’s culture is that we’ve relegated shame to a collection of second-tier
emotions whose burdens modernity is supposed to be freeing us from. But, far from being trivial, shame is the
mechanism by which cultures are formed and perpetuated.
Philosopher Lee Harris, in his 2007 book The Suicide of Reason, points that
that shame is the tool one generation uses to acculturate the next into a
society by training children from a young age to feel shameful for believing
certain things and acting in certain ways.
Religious communities that raise their kids to feel the hot rush of
sweat and queasiness (both shaming symptoms) at sin or disbelief is an example
of this phenomenon. But, as Harris
points out, even moderns raising our kids in a culture of reason do not use
reason to get them accept cultural norms such as tolerance of minorities. Rather, we work hard to ensure that our children
will feel shame at the gut level for engaging in bigoted behavior, or even
having intolerant thoughts.
Given the number of people recommending “naming and shaming”
as a strategy within our own community of activists, it’s worth looking at the
shame phenomenon and when it has proven effective (or not) a bit more
closely.
One pro-Israel organization that has utilizing shaming
tactics with some success is NGO Monitor
which has managed to get a number of European governments and organizations to
stop funding Palestinian “human rights” NGOs that are actually involved with
glorifying terror or spreading propaganda (often as part of BDS
campaigns).
While exposure of those organizations spending cash to celebrate
violence is the tool NGO Monitor uses in its shaming strategy, their success
derives from the fact that the entity being shamed (such as European
governments) are provided the opportunity to claim that they have not
misbehaved themselves but have instead been duped by the Palestinian groups
they have funded. This provides them the
opening to take the right action (cut off funding) in order to preserve their
self-image as tolerant and supportive of human rights, which helps them avoid
the shame of knowing (and being seen) to have abandoned those principles.
In contrast, campaigns designed to directly shame
individuals for their political activity (such as the profiles created by Canary Mission, or postering
campaigns on campuses that expose Israel haters by name) are not designed
to elicit self-reflection. Rather, they
are supposed to create a “price tag” for misbehavior, creating a mechanism
whereby future employers, graduate school admissions officers or family members
will have full access to an individual’s sordid behavior (often created from
background material created by the shamed activist him or herself).
The nature of this form of “naming and shaming” explains the
mixed response to and level of effectiveness of such campaigns. True believers, for example (those who refuse
to accept any self-characterization save unvarnished virtue) see inclusion in
Canary Mission as a badge of honor. And
those whose inclusion might make them think twice about continuing their
activity are making a practical choice based on their own self-interest, rather
than engaging in moral reflection. (As an aside, this helps explain why those
aforementioned postering campaigns have proven so ineffective, since their
narrow audience means they do not create a price tag high enough to trigger a
change in behavior).
So that’s shaming our enemies. But what about shaming our allies?
Such a tactic is not as strange or unusual as you might
think. For, within the divided Jewish
community, there are many times one group of activists might think another is
not doing enough to deal with a particular outbreak of anti-Israel activity. And one way to get others to do what you
think they should is to try to shame them into doing so by alerting the world
that supposed friends of Israel are either not living by their stated
principles or – in some cases – actually doing wrong.
In some cases, the shamer can get what they want from the
shamee using such tactics. But while the
personal shame we feel when we stray from our principles or self-image is made
up of emotions like regret and a desire to do better, public shaming usually drives
those constructive feelings out in favor of the resentment we all feel at being
humiliated.
Like shame itself, humiliation (or, more particularly, the
need to avoid it) is a major driver of human activity since we will all go to great
lengths to make it stop. This can
include doing what we’re told will make such humiliation go away. But, more often than not, we respond to
shaming with resentment which can lead to anything from passive aggressive
“acceptance” to do the right thing once (but never again) to lashing out at
those who have chosen to humiliate us (drowning out discussion of whatever
issue triggered the original bout of shaming).
When supposed allies don’t step up (or worse, do the wrong
thing) about an issue we feel passionately about, it’s easy to believe that
shaming them serves a strategy purpose (or at least avoid considering the negative
impact of a tactic that tends to breed more resentment than repentance).
But if we want to utilize powerful but potentially destructive
human emotions as political weapons, it might be worth considering what options
we have for making friends, neutrals or even wavering enemies feel good
about themselves for supporting our cause, rather than hoping self-disgust
will motivate others to do the right thing.
