Why MAGA-shaming doesn't work
And may even backfire
Many liberals ardently believe that Trump foes would do well to shame, scorn and ridicule Trump supporters (and, more recently, ICE agents). I get the impulse. We’ve all, at some point, had the painful experience of feeling ashamed of something we’ve done or said, making amends, and behaving differently in the future. Doing so is an act of integrity. I would go so far as to say that the ability to learn from shame is a hallmark of ethical adulthood and a staple that holds together the social fabric. Without shame, society would be overrun by sociopaths.
What I’ve described above is healthy shame (which some psychologists call “guilt”). It arises internally, either spontaneously or when others make known the hurt we’ve caused them. For example, let’s say my husband comes to me and says, “When you made fun of me in front of our friends for not knowing that Puerto Rico is a US territory, I felt really embarrassed and betrayed.” Then, I’d say to myself, “Yuck, I feel so bad that I hurt my husband who I love so much. Why in the world did I do that? I need to apologize and commit to never doing that again.” That’s healthy shame in action.
But what if my husband instead came at me with: “I can’t believe you made fun of me for not knowing some stupid fact about Puerto Rico. You know, you can really be a stuck-up bitch!” Ouch! How will I respond now?
When we try to change someone’s behavior by inflicting shame on them, the shame they experience is toxic shame. It rolls out like this: “Oh shit, they’re saying I’m a bad person, this feels absolutely unbearable, they must be wrong. Yeah, they’re wrong, who do they think they are, they know nothing about me, fuck them. I’m going to go hang out with people who will reassure me that I’m a good person and that they are assholes/liberals/snobs I should ignore.”
Toxic shame does not motivate people to engage in introspection or change their behavior. On the contrary, it sets in motion “a downward spiral of bad behavior, shame, more bad behavior, more shame, etc.”
Psychologists know this from clinical practice, and social science research bears it out. Many studies have shown that feelings of shame damage people’s self-worth, disrupt their ability to feel empathy, and prompt them to externalize the blame and lash out aggressively at convenient scapegoats. (A review of some of this literature is here).
During the Covid pandemic, epidemiologist Julia Marcus warned that trying to shame people into wearing masks would only “cement their resistance—and perhaps even drive them to socialize behind closed doors, where being unmasked is higher risk.” Her counsel was based on lessons learned the hard way during the early days of the AIDS epidemic, when public health professionals tried (unsuccessfully) to shame and scare men into wearing condoms.
Shaming triggers defensiveness. At best, it temporarily pushes the behavior underground. At worst, it prompts people to double down on their beliefs or behavior, seek refuge with like-minded people, and retaliate against the shaming class and/or vulnerable people.
Years ago, I asked Dave Fleischer, then-director of the Los Angeles LGBT Leadership Lab, if he believed someone could be shamed out of their bigotry. His reply: “Tell me the time someone shamed you out of something and you’re grateful for it…You can’t bitch-slap someone into changing their stupid little mind.”
So why do liberals persist in hurling contempt at Trump supporters even though it’s counterproductive? I’m guessing most aren’t aware of the backfire effect. But I’ve noticed that, even when they are aware, some choose to keep it up anyway. Why?
In her book Envy Up, Scorn Down, psychologist Susan Fiske observed that, when someone is in a scornful frame of mind, their brain’s reward center lights up in the same way as when they are praised. In other words, contempt feels good; when we unleash it on an adversary, it can serve as a fleeting emotional pick-me-up. When I deem Trump—or one of his supporters—to be reactionary and stupid, then I’m morally superior and smart by comparison. If they’re gullible “fake news” consumers, then I’m a savvy freethinker. If they’re ruled by fear and anger, then I’m a rational actor with a complex inner life.
Scorn can also, Fiske notes, be a form of self-defense. When we as a group feel we are losing ground—and, oh, how we’re losing ground—our contempt helps reassure us that, despite our loss of control, we’re still better than the “other” group.
Lastly, and perhaps most importantly in the social media era, acting superior to another group bolsters our sense of belonging and status within our own in-group. This is no small thing in our sad era of isolation and loneliness. The irony is that the more each side traffics in shame, the more alienated, callous, spiteful, insecure, and sad we all become.
In my neck of the woods—beach adjacent LA area—Trump bashing is a local sport. And among my social set—I’m a career environmental lawyer mostly for nonprofits—Trump is evil incarnate.
I myself am pretty politically homeless here because my classical liberal values have been largely superseded by a more illiberal progressivism. Here I’m actually perceived as right wing for the simple crime of not demonizing anyone who doesn’t share their views.
In short, these folks (including most of my friends) will never change no matter what you write.
And turning everything into a morality play is a major reason why Dems refuse to examine their priors and understand just how whacked out and out of touch progressive policies have become.
Useful as always. Sadly, much activism is driven by dysfunctional impulses. My son despaired at college when it became clear that 95% of the participants in the University green activist group were just performative, wanting to feel good about themselves and like they were in the superior crowd as opposed to actually doing something useful, or at least not generating a bunch of unnecessary waste as part of a protest against waste. The new "liberal" movement on line is rife with people looking to out-virtue everyone who makes an actual useful suggestion by trying to connect it up with white privilege or whatever and therefore reject it. I have pointed out elsewhere https://laboristmovement.substack.com/p/protest-without-more-is-the-opiate that the bulk of recent protests have been performative feel-goods rather than anything designed to serve an actual purpose.
I do think that part of this is actually intentional evil. The East German Stasi records reveal that this was an explicit tactic of theirs to undermine action organizations, using plants to derail useful efforts by raising a bunch of pseudo-virtue demands that stifled progress. I would be amazed if it was not true that many of the attacks one sees on line are done by PR firms trying to suppress useful activity, knowing that other people will then pile on because joining the attacks makes them feel good about themselves.
I think a proper laborist movement would need to be strongly dedicated to your advice, understanding that toxic shaming is not helpful and that it is important to regard other people as human beings. One can focus, for example, on factually criticizing leaders like Lindsey Graham without criticizing the people who voted for him, allowing them the mental out of saying "yeah, he was sure a disappointment." One can recognize that views on immigration and affirmative action and crime and lots of other things are properly complicated and human and have genuine humility in talking through them, trying to find common ground (of which I think there is A LOT, and that most of us can agree on most things if we get off the ramparts and listen to each other) rather than trying to feel superior.