Rationality plays no role in a process defined by negative partisanship.
Rationality plays no role in a process defined by negative partisanship.
T he Black Lives Matter movement, such as it is, manages to evade scrutiny by hiding behind its nebulous structure. BLM is a constellation of a variety of nonaligned activist organizations, its supporters insist. But BLM is also an idea — a movement in the streets arrayed around a set of broadly defined policy goals. In retreating to this vagueness, BLM’s members can take credit for the noble intentions BLM activists retail while simultaneously denying any culpability for the havoc BLM activists also cause. But while the phenomenon is deliberately formless, we can evaluate BLM’s objectives based on the actions of the movement’s self-styled proponents.
BLM activism gave way to the Biden administration’s holistic approach to introducing “equity” into its governance — a program that led Democrats at all levels of government to violate the 14th Amendment’s equal-protection clause on more than one occasion. Its leaders have endorsed the actions of cop killers and terrorists. BLM activists advocated slavery reparations, defunding police departments, dismantling of capitalist economics, and the elimination of cash bail for misdemeanors and serious crimes alike. And in the summer of 2020, those involved in the riots that convulsed nearly every major American city rallied around BLM banners.
We can also evaluate BLM’s goals by examining how the politicians who seek its favor court the movement and its members. The Democratic Party’s presidential aspirants ahead of the 2016 election sought to ingratiate themselves with BLM activists by flattering the pretension that America is wholly and irredeemably racist. America is “a racist society from top to bottom,” Bernie Sanders averred. “Systemic racism has penetrated to every level of our system,” Pete Buttigieg agreed — a sentiment Joe Biden endorsed. To remedy this condition, Elizabeth Warren proposed new “race-conscious laws in education, in employment, in entrepreneurship.”
At first glance, there’s not a lot there that jibes with a conservative political program, which is why so few Republicans have a good word to say about the Black Lives Matter movement. But that was before precisely one self-described BLM activist said something nice about Donald Trump. With that, all bets are apparently off.
“Their policies are basically racist policies — I believe it’s a racist party,” said Mark Fisher, the founder of the Maryland-based BLM Inc. and co-founder of Black Lives Matter Rhode Island, of the Democrats in a recent interview with Fox News Channel host Lawrence Jones. “Donald Trump is just the opposite. He’s going to tell you how it is. He’s going to give it to you straight.”
The statement reads less like an endorsement of Trump than a condemnation of the Democratic Party, but that wink in the former president’s direction sufficed for an olive branch. “Spoke with Mark Fisher yesterday, a great guy, very honored to have his and BLM’s support,” Trump posted on his personal social-media network. “I have done more for Black people than any other President (Lincoln?),” the president said of himself, likening “Opportunity Zones, Criminal Justice Reform, and much more” to the Emancipation Proclamation and the successful prosecution of the Civil War.
The remark represents a wild about-face from the president’s position during the 2020 riots, which Trump blamed on the “terrorists, “Marxists,” and “left-wing radicals” in the “hate” group BLM’s ranks. And Fisher’s remarks are apparently not reflective of the dominant views within the BLM movement. The Washington Post did not lack for BLM-linked sources willing to castigate Fisher for his apostasy. Nor is it clear that Fisher has the firmest grasp on the politics of his own movement. In his Fox interview, the BLM activist criticized Democrats for pursuing policies that “strike at the heart of the Black family and the nuclear family.” But the promotion of a program designed to “disrupt the Western-prescribed nuclear family structure” was one of BLM’s stated objectives, according to the well-heeled 501(c)(3)’s “What We Believe” page on its website.
None of this makes any sense. Unfortunately, it doesn’t have to make any sense. Rationality plays no role in an epistemological process defined by negative partisanship. The elementary logic fueling that phenomenon is tribal and atavistic — roughly, if they’re for it, I’m against it. Negative partisanship is not the result of a voter’s reluctant determination to cast her lot with the lesser of two evils. There is only one evil — the other side — but that is not an immutable condition. One or the other political party may be wholly irredeemable one day or wholly virtuous the next. It’s all context dependent.
Negative partisanship plays a sizeable role in the otherwise inexplicable phenomena that dominate the modern political landscape. It’s how progressive activists could use the same overwrought language to denounce Ron DeSantis, Elon Musk, and Donald Trump as authoritarians, racists, and fascists despite their radically divergent dispositions and stations. It’s why feelings about the word “science” have become a source of political identity. It’s why Republicans and Democrats trade views on the state of the economy and the value of free trade with every presidential administration. It’s why two foreign conflicts against two genocidal, anti-American aggressors elicit wildly divergent views from America’s most partial political observers. It’s why union bosses in American cities could justify school closures long after the harm and irrationality of it all became unavoidable. After all, “conservatives have been attacking unions for decades,” and they can’t be right . . . right?
At some level, America’s partisans know all this is a thoughtless exercise, and they don’t like being reminded of it. “Let’s be honest here,” said then-candidate John Fetterman on the campaign trail, “if Mitch McConnell is for something, that should give anyone pause to be like, ‘Well, then I probably should be against it.’” That is unbearably stupid, and no one wants to conceive of themselves as stupid. Wedded as Americans have become to negative partisanship, they still need a rationalization or two to justify the assumption of views toward which their partisan affiliations already incline them.
That’s why we should soon expect to be bludgeoned mercilessly with BLM rehabilitation narratives by pro-Trump partisans, especially insofar as the issue polarizes voters against all the right people. Be ready to endure the notion that Ron DeSantis is a reckless divider who “thinks you win by subtraction,” as one-time Trump appointee Richard Grenell said after the Florida governor questioned the judgment that produced Trump’s embrace of BLM. Enjoy the contention that Trump is playing the game of politics at a level beyond the comprehension of mere mortals by “trolling BLM,” at once claiming the group’s support while aggravating its more conventional members. The rationalizations don’t have to make sense. They only have to paper over the cognitive dissonance.
Negative partisanship may be a weak force, but so is gravity. With enough mass, its pull is inescapable. And as we careen toward the event horizon of a third Trump nomination, the partisan pressure on political actors to get in line will compel them to embrace so many unforeseeable contradictions and hypocrisies. After all, your political party may be the font from which most all virtues spring, but consistency isn’t one of them.