How Real Democracy Really Works

Most people’s models of democracy do not match how democracies in fact perform or could be made to perform under realistic circumstances. They think citizens form their political affiliations on the basis of their beliefs and values. When citizens vote, they support politicians who will advance their favored ideas. In the end, democracies deliver, if not the will of the people, at least a compromise position among their separate wills. In contrast, Brennan will argue, the empirical work shows that most citizens lack any stable ideology or political beliefs, and their political affiliations are largely arbitrary. Their votes do not communicate their genuine support for different policies or values. Citizens are ignorant, misinformed, and tribalistic despite lacking firm beliefs. As a result, the more power we give them, the more we suffer the consequences. Whatever we say about democracy, we need to be realistic about how people behave.

Right-Wing Psychedelia: Case Studies in Cultural Plasticity and Political Pluripotency

Recent media advocacy for the nascent psychedelic medicine industry has emphasized the potential for psychedelics to improve society, pointing to research studies that have linked psychedelics to increased environmental concern and liberal politics. However, research supporting the hypothesis that psychedelics induce a shift in political beliefs must address the many historical and contemporary cases of psychedelic users who remained authoritarian in their views after taking psychedelics or became radicalized after extensive experience with them. We propose that the common anecdotal accounts of psychedelics precipitating radical shifts in political or religious beliefs result from the contextual factors of set and setting, and have no particular directional basis on the axes of conservatism-liberalism or authoritarianism-egalitarianism. Instead, we argue that any experience which challenges a person's fundamental worldview—including a psychedelic experience—can precipitate shifts in any direction of political belief. We suggest that the historical record supports the concept of psychedelics as “politically pluripotent,” non-specific amplifiers of the political set and setting. Contrary to recent assertions, we show that conservative, hierarchy-based ideologies are able to assimilate psychedelic experiences of interconnection, as expressed by thought leaders like Jordan Peterson, corporadelic actors, and members of several neo-Nazi organizations.

Killing Politics Softly

Early propaganda studies in authoritarian countries argue that state media works to legitimize the regime through indoctrination and persuasion. However, recent scholarship shows that citizens in authoritarian countries—in states like China, Syria, Russia, and Kazakhstan—can be unconvinced by state propaganda. How, then, does the way in which citizens experience unconvincing propaganda shape their political beliefs? How might unpersuasive propaganda contribute to authoritarian stability? Given the lack of alternative theories of propaganda, this article proposes a new hypothesis based on a reception study that interviewed 24 Russian citizens from Krasnoiarsk Krai after they watched items from Russian state television. The article theorizes that unconvincing state propaganda in Russia can reinforce a preexisting cynical attitude toward politics—an attitude that makes the collective action necessary for bottom-up reform hard to contemplate, let alone organize in an authoritarian context.

Fearing the Other Side

Chapter 4 turns to the reasons why people may hide their political beliefs by looking at the reasons for CWG’s secrecy. This chapter addresses the sociological components of fear—including power and social and economic interdependence—that were at play in the women’s decision to keep their politics a secret. It outlines three types of fear in response to partisan hostility: social, economic, and physical. It recounts the women’s stories of actual retaliation within these categories, as well as the role of personal narrative in fueling fear and building camaraderie. This chapter provides evidence that intensifying polarization has made political identity a source of not only social persecution, but of economic and physical persecution as well.

Freedom

Privacy can nurture our ability to develop political beliefs, identities, and expression, and is thus an essential source of political power for citizens against the state. Privacy enables political freedom, letting us act as self-governing citizens, and it is hard to envision a functioning democracy without privacy. Many discussions of privacy and political freedom rely on Orwell’s metaphor of Big Brother, but that image is incomplete because it fails to include private-party surveillance. Surveillance of any kind, whether government or private, raises two particular dangers. First, surveillance threatens the intellectual privacy we need to make up our minds about political and social issues; being watched when we think, read, and communicate can cause us not to experiment with new, controversial, or deviant ideas. Second, surveillance changes the power dynamic between the watcher and the watched; the power surveillance gives to watchers creates risks of blackmail, discrimination, and coercive persuasion.

2020

Chapter 7 provides a look into CWG prior to and after the 2020 election, as well as interviews with several group members prior to the election results. Through this data, this chapter explores how CWG and its members grappled with a global pandemic, a national reckoning around racial injustice, and the gear-up to an unprecedented presidential election. The women of CWG had closed out 2019 with optimism. In looking to their efforts for the 2020 election, the women promised to make “voter education” a priority—continuing their outreach and exploring new ways of reaching possible Democrats in the area. This chapter considers how 2020 reflects the same realities as the years before it and how it presents new challenges regarding if and how people express their political beliefs.

Democracy in Darkness

Chapter 1 discusses the rise of political secrecy amid intensifying political, social, and geographic polarization. It introduces readers to CWG, the secret political organization at the heart of this book, and the contexts in which this group was formed. The existence of CWG and the prominence of political secrecy evident in national survey data suggest that political polarization and prejudice have driven even mainstream Democrats and Republicans to hide their political beliefs. In turn, this chapter argues that if and how people express their political beliefs depends very much on the context they are in, a phenomenon the author calls “networked silence.” Finally, the chapter details why studying political secrecy is important and how this book will approach this topic.

Democracy Lives in Darkness

Republicans and Democrats increasingly distrust, avoid, and wish harm upon those from the other party. To make matters worse, they also increasingly reside among like-minded others and are part of social groups that share their political beliefs. All of this can make expressing a dissenting political opinion hard. Yet digital and social media have given people new spaces for political discourse and community, and more control over who knows their political beliefs and who does not. With Democracy Lives in Darkness, Van Duyn looks at what these changes in the political and media landscape mean for democracy. She uncovers and follows a secret political organization in rural Texas over the entire Trump presidency. The group, which organized out of fear of their conservative community in 2016, has a confidentiality agreement, an email listserv and secret Facebook group, and meets in secret every month. By building relationships with members, she explores how and why they hide their beliefs and what this does for their own political behavior and for their community. Drawing on research from communication, political science, and sociology along with survey data on secret political expression, Van Duyn finds that polarization has led even average partisans to hide their political beliefs from others. And although intensifying polarization will likely make political secrecy more common, she argues that this secrecy is not just evidence that democracy is hurting, but that it is still alive, that people persist in the face of opposition, and that this matters if democracy is to survive.

Political Incubation and Infrastructure

Chapter 6 addresses how people can and do go from keeping their political beliefs a secret to publicly expressing them. It explores how CWG incubated some members to “come out” as local Democrats and some as public leaders by providing a sense of security and a place to practice being political. It also considers how secrecy can be a vital tool for local parties who are in the political minority by offering a private alternative to being publicly active. As evidence, this chapter demonstrates how CWG attracted members who were unwilling to publicly engage with the Democratic Party but covertly supported and rebuilt local party infrastructure by updating voter records, fundraising, or coordinating events. This chapter offers a perspective on local party infrastructure and the influence of political polarization as well as the role that political secrecy can play in helping minority parties establish or rebuild a presence and infrastructure in their communities.