Adversarialism in Politics

It is high time that we abandon adversarialism in our political discourse. Adversarialism serves only to marginalize the other, to heap prejudices upon misconceptions in order to advance whichever position is able to justify as a means its employment of such tactics as either necessary or expedient. Indeed, adversarialism is only ever employed as an expedient: it contains within its catalogue of tactics those which inflame the passions of those it seeks to exploit against that which it seeks to oppose; adversarialism then is only an appeal to viciousness to the exclusion of sound reason.

Adversarialism is then three things primarily: first, it is expedient; second, it is necessarily inflammatory; third, it is vulnerable to the same tactics that it at first posited as expedient. In the third point lays the flaw that negates its first property: adversarialism may be expedient, but it is also indiscriminate. Once the standard of demonizing the other is justified by its utility, it follows that any appeal made to logic in defense of whatever aim adversarialism at first advanced is negated by the standards of utility established in the furtherance of that aim. Therefore, adversarialism must lead to the breakdown of logic as a means of defending any aim if it becomes the dominant mode of persuasion toward a given aim.

Adversarialism is a wholesale embrace of ad hominem combined with an appeal to popularity that gives it a phantom moral authority. The ad hominem of adversarialism is not that of impugning character as such; it is rather an impugning character as far as character is informed by whichever point of view the adversarialist is attempting to defeat according to his or her aims. That is to say, the adversarialist contends that an adherence to a point of view is evidence of a defect in character. To support this premise, the adversarialist attacks his opponent personally in a way that would seem to confirm that the opponent’s point of view has directly contributed to his or her character defects. The adversarialist further bolsters this claim by praising the character of his or her supporters uncritically by virtue and in the same degree as his or her supporters adhere to the point of view the adversarialist advocates. The third pillar of the adversarialist strategy is to create an atmosphere of popular hostility toward his or her opponents as people using whatever means necessary: exaggeration, mischaracterization, and outright lies are not only permissible from the point of view of the adversarialist. They are the aim of the adversarialist as far as they have utility to further his or her larger ideological aim. Through the above tactics, the adversarialist seeks to create a blind prejudice against anyone who holds contrary views to his own.

Adversarialism may or may not be morally reprehensible. That decision is to be made by the moralist. The flaw of adversarialism does not lie in morality. It lies in the misapprehension of its own utility as a tactic. Adversarialism presents a fundamental internal inconsistency that undermines any aim that it used to advance.

The internal inconsistency begins with the apprehension of the original aim by the adversarialist. The adversarialist is to assumed to have arrived at his aim prior to the utilization of adversarialism, which is to say, the aim advanced by adversarialism was originally apprehended by a process of reason uninformed by adversarialism. It may be the case that an adversarialist has been so assimilated into adversarialist tactics that he or she does not recognize that such motivates them in place of the legitimacy of the original aim. However, the original aim was not conceived out of adversarialism. Were it, then adversarialism would somehow be either the original aim or the original premise.

If adversarialism were the original aim, then adversarialism is no longer justifiable as a means. To say that adversarialism is the aim is to say that the aim is to marginalize the opposition to adversarialism, in which case it is assumed that adversarialism has some utility outside its utility to further an aim outside itself. This would indicate that adversarialism is somehow an end unto itself, or that ultimately it is necessary that antagonism be institutionalized as the hegemony. If this is the case, then the adversarialist must justify how adversarialism itself is a end he or she would desire independent of any consequential aim, or else contend that the fundamental nature of human discourse and even human being is adversarial. If such is the case then it presents what would be a rather dismal argument if argued as such, though it would certainly be internally consistent assuming adversarialism a priori.

If adversarialism is the original premise and the subordinate premise is such that it leads to a conclusion that does away with adversarialism as the ultimate aim, then using adversarialism as a tactic will never result in that ultimate aim. The best that such a tactic can hope for is a temporary shift in the hegemony prompted by the popular disavowal of the opposition view by virtue of the premise of adversarialism itself. Adversarialism still remains, and as it does, the conclusion has not been reached.

Advocates of adversarialism argue that once the first aim of dissolving the former hegemony has been achieved the work of educating people in the fundamental logic of the aim can begin. The further argue that this is the only sequence of events that can realistically unfold, since as long as the former hegemony remains intact it will carry with it the burden of false consciousness that must be cast off if a true apprehension of the aim is to become possible. This begs the question and quite egregiously in that the original advocates of the aim apprehended the aim before such a casting off of the hegemony ever occurred and in light of the false consciousness the hegemony presented. To maintain the integrity of such an argument, the advocate of adversarialism must then contend that his aim originated in and as a result of the false consciousness that he or she fundamentally opposes. Such renders any aim thus defended absurd in light of the tactics of adversarialism.

Even if we assume such absurdity is irrelevant to the argument for adversarialism, we must address the question of the education in the aim that the adversarialist claim will be made possible by the dissolution of the hegemony. Understanding that both the aim and the aims contradicted both originated first as a result of reasoning either formulated under the premise of adversarialism or not, it becomes inevitable that such views as those defeated by adversarialism must then be defeated again by the means of reason that the adversarialist and his opponent both had access to prior to the ascendancy of the adversarialist aim. If this is the case, then the utility of adversarialism is challenged by the fact that even after its first aims are achieved, it must be pushed aside to make way for means that were available and more effective before the adversarialist tactics were employed.

If the view is taken that adversarialism is inevitable and thus logical means irrelevant in promoting the truth as such, then the adversarialist concedes also that whatever aim he took to be the end of the means of adversarialism is rendered exactly as vulnerable to further adversarialism as the opposing view. Such a view could be advanced, but it again assumes the a priori nature of adversarialism that makes meaningful progress of any sort impossible and indeed a contradiction in terms.

As for its applications in specific political persuasions, it follows from the initial instability of adversarialism as a tactic rather than an a priori reality that it will in its implementation necessarily compromise the fundamental precepts of any aim that seeks to employ it for its utility as a tool to disrupt the hegemony. If an adversarialist seeks to affect the freedom and equality of all people and then uses adversarialism to truncate the freedom of his opponents and marginalize them personally, he has controverted his or her own aims even as he has accomplished them. Only an individual unconcerned with the integrity of his or her aims can employ adversarialism, and then only to effect the power of persuasion toward the ends of persuasion absent any further aim. In other words, it can only be one who desires the power of persuasion for the sake of the power who can employ adversarialism in pursuit of any aim. Power of persuasion for the sake of power is the only consistent end of adversarialism.

It seems that there should be a balance. I think it is wise to pick your battles, for sure. I do not think that seeing an ideology as something to fight against is not necessarily a bad thing. However, I understand that there are times and places for cooperation and compromise and times and places for competing ideas.

I think that our side does not typically engage in the sort of Adversarialism that our opponents tend to, because we have foundational convictions and principles that inform our opinions and supersede compromise for the sake of "winning."

B-Ran wrote:I think that our side does not typically engage in the sort of Adversarialism that our opponents tend to, because we have foundational convictions and principles that inform our opinions and supersede compromise for the sake of "winning."

I agree. It sometimes requires a disciplined focus for me but I find that I am able to make a lot more progress when I can understand the opposition's motives and reasoning.