I just want to clear something up
I’m not actually a hate-filled poorly
educated Nazi clown leftist cancer on
humanity it is true that during a recent
CNN news program in which I appeared as
a guest expert on democracy and
authoritarianism I did say that in a
democracy it’s not acceptable to label
your political rivals as treasonous scum
simply because they disagree with you on
a tax bill well that wise tidbit so
enraged a guy named max that he felt
moved to send me an email brain he wrote
all right I thought already this guy
thinks I’m smart I’m gonna like this max
guy but then he continued you were a
hate-filled poorly educated Nazi clown
leftist cancer on humanity you are evil
best wishes max did everyone agree with
Max I wondered so I did what anyone does
when they’re yearning for thoughtful
considerate nuanced dialogue presented
in respectful manner I logged on to my
Twitter account the first tweet was by a
guy named hunky gay Jesus 12 who wrote I
want to have Brian class’s baby that’s
better I thought the second tweet was by
a woman who goes by the name of comment
mama 4,000 enjoyed you on CNN this
morning hey this is a reassuring trend
but then she finished you were a
mouth-breathing moron and so it goes and
so it went
every time I or anyone else involved in
politics says really anything and these
days you don’t have to be on TV or on
Twitter or even that involved in
politics increasingly neighbors stop
speaking friendships end and families
are torn apart by politics isn’t that
true do any of us really want to live in
that kind of world
I don’t do we have to live in that kind
of world no we don’t but we do have to
try harder to
save ourselves from the political
extremism that is tearing our societies
apart we need to defeat political
extremism in order to save democracy but
right now
democracy is under threat increasingly
lunatics who used to be on the fringes
of societies are becoming our leaders
and that which was previously
unacceptable is now accepted if we want
to fix this we’re going to have to try
harder we have to try harder because
people like max people who see those who
disagree with them as clowns or cancers
are actually more representative of the
history of our species than people who
can see those who disagree with them as
perhaps incorrect but still as honest
and honorable citizens that is we humans
are not naturally democratic animals
were naturally tribal democracy isn’t
hardwired into our brains tribalism is
30,000 years ago it didn’t matter what
your views were on tax policy or
immigration because those issues just
didn’t exist all that mattered was
survival and survival depended upon
protecting people in your tribe from
people in another tribe if strangers
from another cave let’s call them ugh
and Zug came over the ridge of a nearby
hill you wouldn’t make them a cup of
coffee or offer them a doughnut and have
a chat if you had you might have
realized that ugh loved the same
prehistoric sports that you do or that
Zug thought that your cave paintings
qualified you as the Neanderthal Picasso
but none of that mattered our ancestors
would grunt and stomp and chase them off
with sharp sticks sometimes they’d kill
them it was brutal it was ugly and it
was violent
eventually in most of the world nations
replaced tribes and when powerful
nations like England or Spain wanted to
build empires they typically conquered
weaker nations using divide and rule
tactics and divided against themselves
those nations splintered and fell
nations and even empires eventually did
learn the survival skill of cooperation
not just within a tribe but between
tribes we began to build coalitions
based on ideas not just family ties and
citizens solve disagreements with debate
and dialogue not vitriol and violence
that is democracy happened and in many
places it flourished and where it did
not flourish it was at least admired
unfortunately nowadays democracy is not
flourishing and formally model
democracies are not admired
unfortunately I fear we have entered a
dark age for democracy and a golden age
or perhaps a golden dawn for political
extremism unfortunately I fear we are
creeping backwards toward tribalism
history’s monsters knew how to creep us
backwards the first step was to
dehumanize a perceived enemy in the
American South African slaves were sold
as stock Hitler referred to Jews as rats
and some Hutu leaders in Rwanda called
Tutsis cockroaches
those monsters understood that our
darkest tribal instincts are not dead
they are only asleep and they can be
awakened there are monsters in the world
now of course but what really worries me
is how widespread political extremism
has become even in established
democracies the elected leader of my
country the United States wants to ban
Muslims from crossing any border and on
the southern border he wants to build a
big wall fanning fears perhaps that
modern-day uggs and zugs are coming with
sharp sticks across Europe and even here
in Greece the birthplace of democracy
neo-nazis are being elected fringe nut
cases are moving mainstream so why is
this happening look nobody is born a
political extremists toddlers no matter
how badly tempered don’t hate other
and children sort blocks not other
children by color our instinct as a
species is to cooperate on some level
but we do learn who to cooperate with in
the 1950s five percent of Americans said
that they would be bothered if their son
or daughter married somebody of another
political party today that five percent
has grown to 50 percent welcome to a new
era of political tribalism an era in
which our instinct to be tribal is no
longer about family or clan or village
but is about political ideology and
political identity but why is this
happening now because political
extremism grows best when it is
nourished by anger by lies and by a
villain anger perhaps that my employer
moved to Mexico or Malaysia anger
perhaps that the president of the
company I’ve worked for my entire life
makes 300 times as much as I do or anger
perhaps at the government for not doing
enough to make my life better
lies particularly lies that simplify
complex problems into a memorable but
meaningless soundbite and nowadays there
are plenty of politicians who are eager
to lie to us about who we should blame
for our anger blame the Muslims blame
the migrants blame the Mexicans blame
any scapegoat for every disappointment
you’ve ever experienced when there is
anger and lies and villains compromise
and incremental progress are abandoned
replaced by intransigence and sometimes
by violence I’m from the state of
Minnesota in the American Midwest and
for the most part the state’s economy is
booming
but if you travel to the northern part
of the states in a region called the
Iron Range it’s quite a different story
in the 1950s the Iron Range was boomtown
USA a place where you’d have a good job
and a good pension so long as you worked
hard and played by the rules but today
the iron
range is Rusted left behind by a global
economy where iron ore can be made more
cheaply in China or India or Brazil the
young people have moved away there
aren’t any jobs and the Main streets are
dotted with antique shops food shelves
and bars most of the population is
elderly and grain a community nostalgic
for a time when opportunity ran as deep
as the veins of iron no meteor struck
the iron range it wasn’t sacked by
Genghis Khan or pillaged by pirates ugh
and Zug didn’t invade from Canada no the
iron range was the victim of global
economics and for people in communities
across the globe from Minnesota to
Greece the global financial crisis was
just as devastating as if a meteor
Genghis Khan pirates ugh and Zug all
struck at exactly the same time but who
was to blame for the global financial
crisis you can’t just grab a sharp stick
and attack supply and demand curves but
you can search for anyone to pin the
blame on when you feel like you’ve been
screwed you’re a lot more likely to
entertain increasingly extreme ideas
that search for blame is like fertilizer
to political extremism there have been
many financial crises over the past 200
years and extremists particularly
right-wing extremists have thrived in
the wake of each on average extreme
right-wing parties increase their vote
share by 30 percent after a financial
crisis and at the same time that our
societies were being ravaged by the
invisible hand of economic forces our
societies were also being challenged by
rapid demographic change ugh and Zug
didn’t just arrive over a nearby hill
Syrians arrived in Germany and Somalis
had arrived in faraway Minnesota all of
the sudden everybody in that moment
started to return to their tribal
mentality tribes based on ideology and
identity you can see this change every
millisecond on face
book or Twitter or reddit anger lies
particularly wacky conspiracy theories
and perceived scapegoats and villains
take Edgar Madison Welch for example
Edgar was sort of a regular guy who
added Lee read conspiracy theories
online he read for example that Hillary
Clinton was running a secret underground
child sex ring out of the pizza
restaurant in Washington DC called and I
swear I’m not making this up comet ping
pong so Edgar packed up his
semi-automatic assault weapon he drove
to Washington he burst into the
restaurant much to the astonishment of
all the families who were happily
chomping down on their pepperoni pizzas
and he began firing bullets into the
ceiling thinking that that would somehow
release the children that he believed
were chained in the basement when he was
arrested he acknowledged that quote the
intel on this wasn’t a hundred percent
no kidding
but Edgar illustrates a real problem
with modern social interactions online
and in-person we’re beginning to live in
partisan echo chambers sometimes it’s by
choice other times it’s because digital
algorithms choose for us but either way
we interact more and more with people
who think like us and with those who
believe the same things we believe
unfortunately a lot of people are also
self-selecting into echo chambers that
are not just partisan but extremists
unhinged and laced with lies and with
social media anyone in the world can
spread false and hateful ideas to
everyone else in the world with just the
click of a button
and that’s why Mark Twain put it best
when he wrote it ain’t what you don’t
know that gets you into trouble it’s
what you know for sure that just ain’t
so and that’s why the greatest challenge
for 21st century democracy is that
uninformed voters are being replaced but
replaced by misinformed voters
uninformed people often stay home
misinformed voters turn out and they
often want to blow
the system and it’s also just easier to
be misinformed in a world awash with
information and media outlets it’s often
easier to just figure out what your
political tribe thinks about a given
issue and then to parrot that same
viewpoint look at this chart in 2016
seventy five percent roughly of
Democrats and Republicans in the United
States agreed with this statement quote
criticism from news organizations stops
politicians from doing things they
shouldn’t then Donald Trump ran for and
was elected president after a campaign
filled with anger with lies and with
scapegoats and villains and virtually
overnight political tribalism split the
electorate suddenly the number of
Democrats who agreed at the statement
went up to 89%
while the number of Republicans who
agreed at that same statement went down
way down to 42%
Americans didn’t suddenly just lose
faith in the value of a free press in a
democratic society the responses were
not ideological they were tribal so how
do we stop this march toward political
tribalism and political extremism a few
years ago I was doing field research in
Tunisia and I interviewed this man Saeed
for Johnny thirty years ago he was a
devout Muslim living under a secular
dictatorship and he found the system
intolerable so he plotted a coup d’etat
to overthrow the dictator and replace
him with an Islamic government when his
coup plot was discovered by the dictator
he was arrested and thrown into the
darkest basement of the Ministry of the
Interior
a building that he told me was quote as
deep as it is tall a building in which
political prisoners were tortured hung
from their feet with their hands tied
behind their backs nearly drowned in
basins of urine and excrement tied naked
to iron rods and left hanging for days
like roasted chickens Rajani was
tortured into a coma
and when he came out of it he realized
that the regime had broken his back but
he vowed that they would never break his
will eventually he was released but he
was barred from leaving Tunisia so for
the next several months he taught
himself to walk 50 meters at a time
without showing the excruciating pain
that caused in the hopes that he would
be able to slip by passport control at
the Tunis Airport without arousing
suspicion and it worked with a borrowed
passport he escaped to London where he
lived the next 20 years in exile knowing
that if he came back to Tunisia he would
likely be killed then in 2011 the Arab
Spring happened the dictator was toppled
and himself forced into exile for Johnny
finally went home did he seek vengeance
when he went back No he extended an
olive branch when he became a senior
figure in Tunisia’s new government he
reconciled with people from the
dictators former regime even people from
the Ministry of the Interior partly
because of for Johnnie’s ability to
overcome his tribal instincts and to
reconcile with people who had literally
broken his back Tunisia is the only
surviving democracy from the Arab Spring
frusciante realised that democracy
cannot survive political extremism
cannot survive the intensifying
us-versus-them tribalism cannot survive
the prehistoric mentality that
threatened to tear Tunisia apart so he
helped save his country by ensuring that
his intellect overruled his instinct
democracy over tribalism compromise over
extremism in the West we can do the same
we must do the same if a torture victim
can extend an olive branch to people who
literally broke his back then surely we
can find it in ourselves to seek common
ground with those who disagree with us
about tax policy or immigration
levels if we stay tribal it will be
brutal it will be ugly and it will be
violent but we don’t have to continue
down this path we have something our
ancestors did not the power to vote sure
you may be tempted to vote based on
anger based on lies and based on
scapegoating and blame but we can be
better than that democracy doesn’t occur
naturally it’s a choice a choice to let
the better angels of our nature overrule
our darkest impulses it’s a choice to
reject extremism and embrace pragmatism
it’s a choice that we now all must make
to save democracy by ensuring that our
intellect overrules our instincts thank
you [Applause]
I’m not actually a hate-filled poorly
educated Nazi clown leftist cancer on
humanity it is true that during a recent
CNN news program in which I appeared as
a guest expert on democracy and
authoritarianism I did say that in a
democracy it’s not acceptable to label
your political rivals as treasonous scum
simply because they disagree with you on
a tax bill well that wise tidbit so
enraged a guy named max that he felt
moved to send me an email brain he wrote
all right I thought already this guy
thinks I’m smart I’m gonna like this max
guy but then he continued you were a
hate-filled poorly educated Nazi clown
leftist cancer on humanity you are evil
best wishes max did everyone agree with
Max I wondered so I did what anyone does
when they’re yearning for thoughtful
considerate nuanced dialogue presented
in respectful manner I logged on to my
Twitter account the first tweet was by a
guy named hunky gay Jesus 12 who wrote I
want to have Brian class’s baby that’s
better I thought the second tweet was by
a woman who goes by the name of comment
mama 4,000 enjoyed you on CNN this
morning hey this is a reassuring trend
but then she finished you were a
mouth-breathing moron and so it goes and
so it went
every time I or anyone else involved in
politics says really anything and these
days you don’t have to be on TV or on
Twitter or even that involved in
politics increasingly neighbors stop
speaking friendships end and families
are torn apart by politics isn’t that
true do any of us really want to live in
that kind of world
I don’t do we have to live in that kind
of world no we don’t but we do have to
try harder to
save ourselves from the political
extremism that is tearing our societies
apart we need to defeat political
extremism in order to save democracy but
right now
democracy is under threat increasingly
lunatics who used to be on the fringes
of societies are becoming our leaders
and that which was previously
unacceptable is now accepted if we want
to fix this we’re going to have to try
harder we have to try harder because
people like max people who see those who
disagree with them as clowns or cancers
are actually more representative of the
history of our species than people who
can see those who disagree with them as
perhaps incorrect but still as honest
and honorable citizens that is we humans
are not naturally democratic animals
were naturally tribal democracy isn’t
hardwired into our brains tribalism is
30,000 years ago it didn’t matter what
your views were on tax policy or
immigration because those issues just
didn’t exist all that mattered was
survival and survival depended upon
protecting people in your tribe from
people in another tribe if strangers
from another cave let’s call them ugh
and Zug came over the ridge of a nearby
hill you wouldn’t make them a cup of
coffee or offer them a doughnut and have
a chat if you had you might have
realized that ugh loved the same
prehistoric sports that you do or that
Zug thought that your cave paintings
qualified you as the Neanderthal Picasso
but none of that mattered our ancestors
would grunt and stomp and chase them off
with sharp sticks sometimes they’d kill
them it was brutal it was ugly and it
was violent
eventually in most of the world nations
replaced tribes and when powerful
nations like England or Spain wanted to
build empires they typically conquered
weaker nations using divide and rule
tactics and divided against themselves
those nations splintered and fell
nations and even empires eventually did
learn the survival skill of cooperation
not just within a tribe but between
tribes we began to build coalitions
based on ideas not just family ties and
citizens solve disagreements with debate
and dialogue not vitriol and violence
that is democracy happened and in many
places it flourished and where it did
not flourish it was at least admired
unfortunately nowadays democracy is not
flourishing and formally model
democracies are not admired
unfortunately I fear we have entered a
dark age for democracy and a golden age
or perhaps a golden dawn for political
extremism unfortunately I fear we are
creeping backwards toward tribalism
history’s monsters knew how to creep us
backwards the first step was to
dehumanize a perceived enemy in the
American South African slaves were sold
as stock Hitler referred to Jews as rats
and some Hutu leaders in Rwanda called
Tutsis cockroaches
those monsters understood that our
darkest tribal instincts are not dead
they are only asleep and they can be
awakened there are monsters in the world
now of course but what really worries me
is how widespread political extremism
has become even in established
democracies the elected leader of my
country the United States wants to ban
Muslims from crossing any border and on
the southern border he wants to build a
big wall fanning fears perhaps that
modern-day uggs and zugs are coming with
sharp sticks across Europe and even here
in Greece the birthplace of democracy
neo-nazis are being elected fringe nut
cases are moving mainstream so why is
this happening look nobody is born a
political extremists toddlers no matter
how badly tempered don’t hate other
and children sort blocks not other
children by color our instinct as a
species is to cooperate on some level
but we do learn who to cooperate with in
the 1950s five percent of Americans said
that they would be bothered if their son
or daughter married somebody of another
political party today that five percent
has grown to 50 percent welcome to a new
era of political tribalism an era in
which our instinct to be tribal is no
longer about family or clan or village
but is about political ideology and
political identity but why is this
happening now because political
extremism grows best when it is
nourished by anger by lies and by a
villain anger perhaps that my employer
moved to Mexico or Malaysia anger
perhaps that the president of the
company I’ve worked for my entire life
makes 300 times as much as I do or anger
perhaps at the government for not doing
enough to make my life better
lies particularly lies that simplify
complex problems into a memorable but
meaningless soundbite and nowadays there
are plenty of politicians who are eager
to lie to us about who we should blame
for our anger blame the Muslims blame
the migrants blame the Mexicans blame
any scapegoat for every disappointment
you’ve ever experienced when there is
anger and lies and villains compromise
and incremental progress are abandoned
replaced by intransigence and sometimes
by violence I’m from the state of
Minnesota in the American Midwest and
for the most part the state’s economy is
booming
but if you travel to the northern part
of the states in a region called the
Iron Range it’s quite a different story
in the 1950s the Iron Range was boomtown
USA a place where you’d have a good job
and a good pension so long as you worked
hard and played by the rules but today
the iron
range is Rusted left behind by a global
economy where iron ore can be made more
cheaply in China or India or Brazil the
young people have moved away there
aren’t any jobs and the Main streets are
dotted with antique shops food shelves
and bars most of the population is
elderly and grain a community nostalgic
for a time when opportunity ran as deep
as the veins of iron no meteor struck
the iron range it wasn’t sacked by
Genghis Khan or pillaged by pirates ugh
and Zug didn’t invade from Canada no the
iron range was the victim of global
economics and for people in communities
across the globe from Minnesota to
Greece the global financial crisis was
just as devastating as if a meteor
Genghis Khan pirates ugh and Zug all
struck at exactly the same time but who
was to blame for the global financial
crisis you can’t just grab a sharp stick
and attack supply and demand curves but
you can search for anyone to pin the
blame on when you feel like you’ve been
screwed you’re a lot more likely to
entertain increasingly extreme ideas
that search for blame is like fertilizer
to political extremism there have been
many financial crises over the past 200
years and extremists particularly
right-wing extremists have thrived in
the wake of each on average extreme
right-wing parties increase their vote
share by 30 percent after a financial
crisis and at the same time that our
societies were being ravaged by the
invisible hand of economic forces our
societies were also being challenged by
rapid demographic change ugh and Zug
didn’t just arrive over a nearby hill
Syrians arrived in Germany and Somalis
had arrived in faraway Minnesota all of
the sudden everybody in that moment
started to return to their tribal
mentality tribes based on ideology and
identity you can see this change every
millisecond on face
book or Twitter or reddit anger lies
particularly wacky conspiracy theories
and perceived scapegoats and villains
take Edgar Madison Welch for example
Edgar was sort of a regular guy who
added Lee read conspiracy theories
online he read for example that Hillary
Clinton was running a secret underground
child sex ring out of the pizza
restaurant in Washington DC called and I
swear I’m not making this up comet ping
pong so Edgar packed up his
semi-automatic assault weapon he drove
to Washington he burst into the
restaurant much to the astonishment of
all the families who were happily
chomping down on their pepperoni pizzas
and he began firing bullets into the
ceiling thinking that that would somehow
release the children that he believed
were chained in the basement when he was
arrested he acknowledged that quote the
intel on this wasn’t a hundred percent
no kidding
but Edgar illustrates a real problem
with modern social interactions online
and in-person we’re beginning to live in
partisan echo chambers sometimes it’s by
choice other times it’s because digital
algorithms choose for us but either way
we interact more and more with people
who think like us and with those who
believe the same things we believe
unfortunately a lot of people are also
self-selecting into echo chambers that
are not just partisan but extremists
unhinged and laced with lies and with
social media anyone in the world can
spread false and hateful ideas to
everyone else in the world with just the
click of a button
and that’s why Mark Twain put it best
when he wrote it ain’t what you don’t
know that gets you into trouble it’s
what you know for sure that just ain’t
so and that’s why the greatest challenge
for 21st century democracy is that
uninformed voters are being replaced but
replaced by misinformed voters
uninformed people often stay home
misinformed voters turn out and they
often want to blow
the system and it’s also just easier to
be misinformed in a world awash with
information and media outlets it’s often
easier to just figure out what your
political tribe thinks about a given
issue and then to parrot that same
viewpoint look at this chart in 2016
seventy five percent roughly of
Democrats and Republicans in the United
States agreed with this statement quote
criticism from news organizations stops
politicians from doing things they
shouldn’t then Donald Trump ran for and
was elected president after a campaign
filled with anger with lies and with
scapegoats and villains and virtually
overnight political tribalism split the
electorate suddenly the number of
Democrats who agreed at the statement
went up to 89%
while the number of Republicans who
agreed at that same statement went down
way down to 42%
Americans didn’t suddenly just lose
faith in the value of a free press in a
democratic society the responses were
not ideological they were tribal so how
do we stop this march toward political
tribalism and political extremism a few
years ago I was doing field research in
Tunisia and I interviewed this man Saeed
for Johnny thirty years ago he was a
devout Muslim living under a secular
dictatorship and he found the system
intolerable so he plotted a coup d’etat
to overthrow the dictator and replace
him with an Islamic government when his
coup plot was discovered by the dictator
he was arrested and thrown into the
darkest basement of the Ministry of the
Interior
a building that he told me was quote as
deep as it is tall a building in which
political prisoners were tortured hung
from their feet with their hands tied
behind their backs nearly drowned in
basins of urine and excrement tied naked
to iron rods and left hanging for days
like roasted chickens Rajani was
tortured into a coma
and when he came out of it he realized
that the regime had broken his back but
he vowed that they would never break his
will eventually he was released but he
was barred from leaving Tunisia so for
the next several months he taught
himself to walk 50 meters at a time
without showing the excruciating pain
that caused in the hopes that he would
be able to slip by passport control at
the Tunis Airport without arousing
suspicion and it worked with a borrowed
passport he escaped to London where he
lived the next 20 years in exile knowing
that if he came back to Tunisia he would
likely be killed then in 2011 the Arab
Spring happened the dictator was toppled
and himself forced into exile for Johnny
finally went home did he seek vengeance
when he went back No he extended an
olive branch when he became a senior
figure in Tunisia’s new government he
reconciled with people from the
dictators former regime even people from
the Ministry of the Interior partly
because of for Johnnie’s ability to
overcome his tribal instincts and to
reconcile with people who had literally
broken his back Tunisia is the only
surviving democracy from the Arab Spring
frusciante realised that democracy
cannot survive political extremism
cannot survive the intensifying
us-versus-them tribalism cannot survive
the prehistoric mentality that
threatened to tear Tunisia apart so he
helped save his country by ensuring that
his intellect overruled his instinct
democracy over tribalism compromise over
extremism in the West we can do the same
we must do the same if a torture victim
can extend an olive branch to people who
literally broke his back then surely we
can find it in ourselves to seek common
ground with those who disagree with us
about tax policy or immigration
levels if we stay tribal it will be
brutal it will be ugly and it will be
violent but we don’t have to continue
down this path we have something our
ancestors did not the power to vote sure
you may be tempted to vote based on
anger based on lies and based on
scapegoating and blame but we can be
better than that democracy doesn’t occur
naturally it’s a choice a choice to let
the better angels of our nature overrule
our darkest impulses it’s a choice to
reject extremism and embrace pragmatism
it’s a choice that we now all must make
to save democracy by ensuring that our
intellect overrules our instincts thank
you [Applause]
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