Postscript to Populism vs Technocracy

I spent my last post beating up on a Vox article, so as a postscript let me praise this one, where Ezra Klein interviews Obama's 2008 staffers about the similarities and differences between their campaigns. What particularly stood out to me was his email interview with Obama's speechwriter at the time, Jon Favreau. In 2008, one thing Obama said was, "It's time to let the drug and insurance industries know that while they'll get a seat at the table, they don't get to buy every chair." Favreau explains:

To me, this exemplifies the difference between Bernie and Obama. Bernie would never say something like that. He doesn't think insurance companies, or drug companies, or banks, or millionaires get any seats at the table. He doesn't talk about making progress by working with Republicans, or the political establishment, or the business establishment. I guess his plan is to build a mobilized grassroots that simply wrestles power away from those who have it. 

It's not just that Obama doesn't think that's feasible, it's that he doesn't think that's the right way to govern in a pluralistic democracy where everyone gets a voice. Obama believes that there's too many Americans who don't have a voice, and too many Americans who don't have opportunity, and that a big reason for that is the power of special interests and big corporations. But he also believes that there's a place for those interests and corporations in our system.

Note, again, that combination of criticisms: populism is both infeasible and undesirable. However, Favreau clearly isn't very interested in the feasibility critique. Instead, he explicitly says that Obama (and by extension Favreau) thinks special interests and big corporations should have some power, just not as much as they have right now. And Obama indeed enacted that policy as President; there are numerous examples I could site, but this secret deal he made with the pharmaceutical companies before the healthcare fight is the most blatant one.

This is technocracy in action. Favreau says that Bernie doesn't want special interests or big corporations to "get any seats of the table." That, though, is an exaggeration; it's not like Sanders is proposing to disenfranchise the rich. He doesn't want to deny seats to the big corporations, he just wants them to have the same seats as everyone else. Favreau (and according to him, Obama), on the other hand, want the rich and powerful to remain more powerful than the marginalized--just somewhat less powerful than they currently are. (Again, keep in mind he's arguing this state of affairs is desirable, not inevitable.) It's...interesting...that he claims to be defending "pluralistic democracy" while advocating an explicitly anti-democratic and anti-egalitarian worldview.

While Favreau doesn't justify his position, I think it's fair to say it comes from the technocratic attitude I discussed in my previous post. Consider his characterization of Sanders's proposal: "to build a mobilized grassroots that simply wrestles power away from those who have it." Favreau seems to conceive of populism as a kind of violence: wrestling power away from the powerful. And honestly, he's kind of right. As Klein says later in his article:

In this telling, the core difference between Obama and Sanders is that Obama's theory of political change was that American politics needed to become less ideological and less conflictual, while Sanders's theory of change is that American politics needs to be made more ideological and more conflictual.

This is precisely right. Mass movements are extremely ideological and conflictual. Sometimes they become literally violent, but even when they don't things like protests and boycotts are basically attempts to coerce others into doing what you want them to do. Technocracy by contrast, if only because there are far fewer people involved, is transactional, consensus-based, sometimes even polite. It is also, of course, undemocratic. But for some, that's a cost worth paying, or even perhaps not a cost at all.

I'll try to write something for this Sunday. Not sure what yet. Suggestions are welcome.

Hillary Clinton is not (just) a pragmatist: she's a technocrat

I

David Roberts of Vox recently wrote a post about the Democratic primary, inspired by the recent kerfuffle about whether Clinton is a "progressive." Roberts calls the idea that one cannot be both a moderate and a progressive an "illuminating error" which "helps expose a key source of misunderstanding between the Clinton and Sanders camps." Ironically, in explicating this "error," I think Roberts makes an illuminating error of his own in asserting that the main difference between Clinton and Sanders is the former is a pragmatist ("a progressive who gets things done," perhaps), and the latter isn't. In reality, though, they're both pragmatists, it's just their theories of change are different: Sanders is a populist, while Clinton is a technocrat. Before explaining what I mean by that, though, I want to summarize Roberts's argument.

Roberts argues that there are (at least) two ways one can assess a political candidate: their ideology and their "practicality." Roberts writes:

"Progressive" is an ideological term. It refers to a position on an ideological spectrum, namely to the left. A progressive's opposite is a conservative. 

"Moderate" is a practical term. . . . Broadly speaking, it refers to a candidate who focuses on consensus-building and incremental progress, someone who doesn't believe the US political system is capable of sudden, lurching change, or just doesn't want that kind of change. 

A moderate's opposite is a radical, someone who believes rapid, revolutionary change is both possible and necessary.

(Note how Roberts conflates two senses of "moderate": someone who believes rapid change is impossible, and someone who believes it's undesirable. I'll come back to this later.)

Roberts claims Sanders prefers talking about ideology (what he wants to do), while Clinton prefers talking about practicality (what it's possible to do). As a result of this, arguments between each faction tend to be unproductive. Sanders supporters "reject out of hand" the notion that "Clinton and her supporters might believe equally in the values of the left but differ on strategy." Similarly, Clinton supporters interpret any "expression of ambition" as "a lack of knowledge about How Politics Really Works."

Despite this try at even-handedness, Roberts's sympathy with the Clinton side of this debate is clear. He writes:

But over time, I have grown extremely skeptical, not to say cynical, about the capacity of US political institutions to deliver dramatic change. And I've witnessed the cycle of hyperbolic liberal hopes followed by melodramatic liberal despair too many times.

Roberts admits that the "reality" he's expecting liberals to accept is "creeping oligarchy and militarism," and that "on climate change alone, something like a revolution seems necessary." However, his final point is that even if we need a revolution, the President isn't the person we should look to for one:

The president is constrained by layer after layer of checks and balances, veto points, entrenched interests, and institutional inertia. For a president in polarized times, progress comes not with a bludgeon but with a chisel. 

The reason the left's revolution hasn't arrived isn't just that money has corrupted Washington, though it undoubtedly has. It's that half the country views massive new taxes and government spending programs with horror. . . . Resistance is not futile, but it is painstaking.

While I have some nitpicks with Roberts's argument--Sanders certainly has explained what he means by "political revolution" whether you agree or not, and a majority of the country supports (for example) single-payer health care--my biggest issue is with his starting distinction between ideology and practicality. This is the "illuminating error" I referred to, which I will now discuss in detail.

II

To begin with, recall that Roberts gave two different descriptions of a "moderate": one who believes radical change is impossible, and one who believes it's undesirable. Considering Roberts's overall article, he seems to put himself in the former camp. However, this camp is objectively incorrect. Here are just a few examples of radical change that have occurred throughout American history:

1) In the late 1700s, the entire system of American government (rule from Britain) was overthrown and a new one was drawn up from scratch.

2) In the mid to late 1800s, slavery, the foundation of the American economy, was abolished.

3) In the early 1900s, half of the population was given the right to vote for the first time, permanently affecting American politics to this day. (In 2012, Obama won the female vote 55% to 44%.)

4) In the mid 1900s, the economy was fundamentally transformed again, setting the stage for a massive rise in median family income.

5) In the mid to late 1900s, the system that had been set up to oppress black Americans after slavery, which had lasted for a century, was overthrown along with much of patriarchy.

6) In the late 1900s, a backlash occurred and we swung back to the right, a process that is currently ongoing.

To be fair, these changes were not always pretty; for example, the first two were ultimately accomplished by wars, and the New Deal would not have happened without the Great Depression. Furthermore, the successes were often mixed: after the American Revolution only white male property-owners could vote; racism and sexism continue to be pervasive; the New Deal often explicitly excluded people of color from its benefits. Nevertheless, they are surely far more radical than Sanders's major proposals, all of which already exist in other countries (and some of which, like free college, used to exist in this country). One is forced to wonder where Roberts's cynicism about fundamental change comes from, especially since the last one--the conservative revolution--is so recent.

Perhaps Roberts thinks the country has just fundamentally changed since the 1960s: it's too divided now, the special interests are too strong. However, this notion is ridiculous. Segregation was supported by half the country and centuries of history. Slavery was the backbone of the American economy, backed by some of the richest and most powerful individuals ever to exist. If anything, the enemies of progressivism's past were more powerful than the enemies of progressivism's present.

I suspect the source of Roberts's discomfort resides elsewhere. There is an important commonality between all six instances of radical change I cited: they were all accomplished by massive popular movements. This includes the American Revolution, which was preceded by decades of protest, boycotts, and rioting. (They looted the mansion of the pro-British lieutenant governor of Massachusetts.) Not coincidentally, this is precisely Sanders's strategy for enacting change:

"But if, on that very day, as an example," [Sanders] continued, "a million young people march in on Washington to say exactly what Colleen said a few moments ago, that all of our young people who have the ability deserve to get a college education regardless of the income of their families, suddenly, that gentleman will look out the window and say, 'Well, Mr. President, let's sit down and talk about how we can address this serious problem.'"

This strategy has its flaws. As the above Slate article points out, cheap fossil fuels benefit millions of Americans (not just oil companies), so it may be difficult to build a mass movement against global warming. More fundamentally, one could argue that the very notion of an anti-establishment movement led by the President of the United States is a contradiction in terms, and that to be truly independent and long-lasting we need to organize around issues, not personalities. While I am myself a Sanders supporter, I think both these objections are plausible and on-point. Nevertheless, it seems clear that a mass movement does have the capability of forcing radical change, and so the only way one can argue that only incremental change is possible is if one takes mass politics off the table.

And indeed Roberts, despite his disclaimers in support of activism, doesn't seem at all interested in the question of how to build a durable left-wing mass movement. I wonder, then, if Roberts might fall into the second camp of "moderate": someone who believes radical change is undesirable. Not necessarily because they disagree with radical change as an end goal, but because they disagree with the means necessary to achieve this.

Roberts argues that Sanders and Clinton both share the same goal, they just disagree on how to achieve it. Well, perhaps a Dictator Sanders and a Dictator Clinton wouldn't look very different. But who cares? Neither are running for dictator. In the actual world, it is impossible to draw such a clean line between someone's "ideology" and their "practicality." Sanders and Clinton disagree on tactics, yes, but this disagreement is based on a deeper ideological difference: Sanders believes that change should be achieved by a mass movement, while Clinton believes that change should be achieved by a small group of experts. In short, Sanders is a populist and Clinton is a technocrat. Their ideologies determine which tactics they consider acceptable.

III

My use of the terms "populist" and "technocrat" may be unclear and is probably idiosyncratic. So first I'll explain a bit what I take those terms to mean, and then I'll back up my claim that Clinton is a technocrat.

A technocrat believes that politics is, at bottom, a science. As such, in an ideal state, politics would be handled by trained experts. These experts would, non-ideologically, determine which policies would lead to the most benefit/greatest welfare for the country, and would then enact those policies. This is not to say that technocrats have no use for the public--however, by necessity the public must play a subordinate role. Namely, the purpose of sympathetic popular movements is to advocate for the policies that the experts come up with and to pressure those who oppose those policies (either through ignorance or maliciousness). What they must not do is pressure the experts themselves, because while the experts might not always be right, due to their expertise they are more likely to be right than the uneducated public.

I should note that, while I disagree with it, technocracy is not implausible on its face. After all, in most areas of our life (medicine, law, etc) we consult experts to decide what to do. Why should politics be any different?

I think the best way to describe the opposite view, populism, is that a populist thinks politics is at bottom a struggle. More specifically, it's a struggle between the powerful and the non-powerful, or marginalized. Since the marginalized are typically more numerous than the powerful, a populist's main task is to encourage the marginalized to unite and organize, in order to gain power and defeat the powerful. To a populist, the "non-ideological experts" the technocrat values so much are in fact part of the powerful--they are ultimately enemies, not saviors (though some may occasionally be tactical allies). In the populist's ideal state, the public, and not a small group of experts, would rule.

In my opinion, the best argument in favor of populism and against technocracy is that there's no such thing as a non-ideological expert. Depending on what you value, your theory on what counts as the "general welfare" will differ. So while technocrats claim to merely be non-ideologically--or "pragmatically," if you will--doing "what works," in reality they are imposing their own set of values on the rest of society. This, in my view, is really a form of tyranny. But then, as a Sanders supporter, I suppose I would think that. And technocracy has a long tradition, arguably starting with Plato, so it's not like all technocrats are evil or even ignorant. And to be fair, history shows that mass movements often end up supporting vile policies and politicians, so I can certainly understand the motivation behind technocracy even though I disagree.

Anyway, it's pretty clear that Sanders is a "populist" in my sense: he's explicitly calling for a mass movement to pressure both parties to enact his favored policies. What about Clinton, though?

Well, we can't peer into her soul, and as far as I know she hasn't explicitly endorsed either position. Nevertheless, I think she's almost certainly a technocrat, due in part to: her reliance on big donors, her rejection of radicalism and advocacy of incrementalism, and her alignment with the Democratic establishment. I will argue this next.

IV

Clinton giving speeches to banks for hundreds of thousands of dollars has become an issue recently, compounding the previous issue of her using a SuperPAC, fundraising from large corporations, etc. Her response has been, essentially, that she's never changed a vote due to a campaign contribution. This may be true, but it's essentially beside the point. As Alex Pareene points out in this excellent Gawker article:

Bernie Sanders' critique of Clinton is not that she's cartoonishly corrupt in the Tammany Hall style, capable of being fully bought with a couple well-compensated speeches, but that she's a creature of a fundamentally corrupt system, who comfortably operates within that system and accepts it as legitimate. Clinton has had trouble countering that critique because, well, it's true. It's not that she's been bought, it's that she bought in. [Emphasis added.]

Clinton took offense at the recent debate to being called part of the establishment. But the "establishment" isn't a single entity, it's a catch-all term to describe the powerful entities in a society, and as one of the most powerful people in the country Clinton is certainly a member of the establishment, at least the Democratic one. (Indeed, her pitch as being an "experienced progressive who gets things done" is based on this membership.) The Democratic establishment has decided that to succeed it must work with other powerful entities, like big corporations, rather than fight them. By relying on money from these powerful corporations, Clinton is clearly using the same strategy.

This strategy is a technocratic one, both for what it does and what it does not do. While CEOs and other rich individuals may not seem like "experts," according to modern capitalist mythology anyone who makes it big is intelligent, hard-working, knowledgeable, etc. This is the justification behind hiring rich employees of these firms to important government positions: they are the savvy ones who know what to do. The Platonic philosopher-king has become a CEO.

Even more importantly, though, is what the strategy doesn't do: namely, it's not even trying to rely on left movements. This is where incrementalism (and thus, the original Vox article by Roberts) come into play. Roberts asserts that only incremental change is possible in our modern political system. Clinton herself and many of her supporters agree. But as I've argued, this is only true if one preemptively declares mass politics--that is, populism--untenable. Since mass politics can clearly work, this makes sense only if Clinton believes populism is undesirable, that we shouldn't make a strong left mass movement even though it would be effective. Thus, while he might not be aware of it, Roberts is effectively advocating for technocracy in his article, and Clinton (who probably is aware of it) is advocating for technocracy in her campaign.

And this shouldn't be a surprise, because technocracy is the main strategy of the Democratic establishment. There are far too many examples of this to list, but the most revealing is the actions of Barack Obama, the President whom Clinton has more or less promised to be the 3rd term of. Obama got elected President partly on the back of a large and enthusiastic movement. But rather then try to build it into an independent force that could pressure Congress, even its Democratic members, even Obama himself, in a liberal direction, Obama basically put it on ice until he wanted to use it to advocate for the end result of his legislative sausage-making. Anyone remember this?

This image was all over the place in 2009, and while it's not used much anymore the sentiment that goes with it surely is. Let Obama handle things; our role as citizens, if anything, is merely to support whatever policies and laws he decides on. This is, of course, a fundamentally technocratic way of conceiving politics. And while it's possible that Clinton will repudiate it and enthusiastically support any left movement that might emerge, I'm not holding my breath.

(Disclaimer: It is true that Democrats have been largely respectful of the Black Lives Matter movement. This is because they have to be, as BLM has built for itself a lot of power, both political and cultural. But if BLM starts seriously going after Democrats who are recalcitrant on police reform [aside from disgraced mayor Rahm Emanuel], I expect this to change. But we'll see.)

V

So where does this leave us, then? Sanders is a populist while Clinton is a technocrat, and since populism is correct you should vote Sanders?

Not precisely. There is danger in a Sanders-led mass movement: even if Sanders were a perfect politician (which he's far from being), the movement would dissipate as soon as he leaves office. But it takes decades, at least, for a truly radical movement to succeed in even some of its goals. (The conservative movement began after WWII and only really "won" in 1980, if that. The Civil Rights movement arguably began shortly after the Civil War, which means it took almost a century of activism to tear down Jim Crow.) A left movement cannot be a "Sanders movement"; it needs to be independent of any politician.

Which leads to the question: assuming we can form a left mass movement, does it really matter that much who's President? Would a President Clinton under constant pressure from a left movement be that much different from a President Sanders under constant pressure from a left movement? Perhaps not--in which case, one could accept my entire analysis while still preferring Clinton for other reasons (electability, the symbolic value of a female President, etc).

Despite my clickbait title, though, this article is not ultimately about the Clinton/Sanders primary. What bothers me about Roberts's Vox article, and countless similar ones, is not that it's pro-Clinton but that it's pro-technocracy. A technocrat cannot change the status quo because they disdain the only thing they can. For anyone who believes the status quo is unacceptable, a mass movement is necessary and technocratic incrementalism must be rejected. No matter who wins this November.

The Tone Argument: What counts as an insult?

I

A contentious issue, both within the "social justice community" (to the extent that's a thing) and in relations between the social justice community and the wider culture, is the "tone argument." The idea is that it's in some sense wrong to criticize the tone of people advocating for social justice, attacking bigotry, etc. As Geek Feminism wiki puts it:

A tone argument is an argument used in discussions, sometimes by Concern trolls and sometimes a Derailment, in which it is suggested that feminist would be more successful if only they expressed themselves in a more pleasant tone. . . . 

The tone argument is a form of derailment, or a red herring, because the tone of a statement is independent of the content of the statement in question, and calling attention to it distracts from the issue at hand. Drawing attention to the tone rather than the content of a statement can allow other parties to avoid engaging with sound arguments presented in that statement, thus undermining the original party's attempt to communicate and effectively shutting them down.

Or, as Katherine Cross puts it in this article:

In rule form, the tone argument might be expressed as follows: Any attempt to discuss or criticize the tone of an activist is a deliberate attempt at leveraging institutional power to silence the marginalized and must be avoided at all costs.

In other words: an argument's tone is separate from its content, so focusing on the former is distracting attention away from the latter. Combine this with the fact, also mentioned by Cross, that anti-bigotry activists (especially those from marginalized groups) are often dismissed as being e.g. too "angry" even when they have extremely valid points, and dismissing criticism of tone as an improper "tone argument" may seem quite reasonable.

However, some argue that the tone argument should not be dismissed out of hand, because sometimes the tone of a social justice activist really is improper, wrong, and hurtful. As Cross goes on to argue:

To put it simply: sometimes someone is being too angry. . . . Sometimes you are just being too loud, abusing people verbally, triggering them, and so forth. Sometimes you are just being a jerk and your tone is a fairly reliable indicator of this.

Or, as George R.R. Martin argued in the context of the Sad Puppies incident last year (which I'm not going to even attempt to summarize right now):

The way I have seen it work, dozens of times now, is that a debate or discussion starts out as a reasonable exchange of ideas, but then grows heated. Tempers fray, names are called, the posts get uglier and uglier... and someone, or maybe a bunch of someones, steps over the line and says something truly cruel or hurtful or just nasty. And the target, or maybe a bystander, objects and says, "no call for language like that" or "can't we all calm down" or something along that line... whereupon a loud cry of "Tone Argument, Tone Argument, Tone Argument" goes up, and person [sic] who called for calm is shouted down or torn apart. 

. . . . 

I applaud the Tone Argument. The Tone Argument is valid. Yay for the Tone Argument. 

We can disagree with each other without attacking each other. And no, I am not going to listen to you if you're screaming at me and calling me offensive names. You shouldn't either, no matter who you are. None of us should have to put up with that shit.

This, too, may seem quite reasonable. If X, in the course of an argument, tells Y to kill themselves, it appears that X has done something wrong and we should criticize X's tone regardless of the quality of their argument (and indeed, even regardless of the quality of Y's character).

Of course, with rare exception, I think most would agree that heartfelt violent rhetoric like that is inappropriate and wrong. One of the difficulties with the "tone argument" is that there are many types of "uncivil" tone, but discussions of the "tone argument" tend to ignore specifics and deal in generalities. Most would agree it is wrong to tell someone to kill themselves (much less to actually threaten violence, rape, etc), while most would agree it's legitimate to merely tell someone their opinion is wrong. The question, then, is where to draw the line.

However, in this post I will argue that it is wrong to draw this line based on what level of vitriolic tone we consider acceptable, and indeed, that insisting on a civil tone and lack of insults actually focuses on entirely the wrong issue. Contrary to the usual justifications for rejecting the tone argument, however, this is not because tone is separate from content and so focusing on tone is derailing. Rather, it is because tone is not separate from content: some kinds of argument are inherently insulting, and so insisting as Martin does that people "disagree with each other without attacking each other" is actually insisting that certain views not be expressed.

To argue this, I will first take a short detour.

II

After the 2008 election, indeed almost immediately after, one of the biggest issues of contention within liberal America became: do you generally support Barack Obama's presidency, or do you generally oppose it (from the left, of course)? The biggest online battlefield between these two camps was (and largely still is) the community blog DailyKos.

I will confess that, sometime during the healthcare reform fight in 2009, I started to lean strongly toward the "critic" camp. But the point of this detour is not that. Rather, I want to focus on one aspect of this fight: in what ways is it acceptable for Obama to be criticized? In particular, many in the "supporter" camp claimed (and still claim) that, while they have no problem with criticism of Obama's policies, they do have a problem with attacks on his character. For example, in a comment on DailyKos, SUNY Professor Ian Reifowitz said:

We should keep criticizing and pushing Obama left, but we must not demonize him, both because he is so closely identified with liberalism (and yes, he is, among the American people at large) and because of what he represents to African Americans as the first black president.

Seeing an opportunity to make a point I had wanted to make for a while (forgive the narcissistic self-citation), I replied:

[W]hat, in your view, is the difference between "criticism" and "demonization"?

Reifowitz replied that "calling him names is demonization," while "content-based criticism" is not. The problem with this, I felt, is that the line between "content-based criticism" and name-calling is not always so clear, so I responded:

For example, let's say one believes that the President's drone program constitutes a war crime. While technically being a content-based criticism, this line of attack essentially calls him a war criminal, which many would consider demonization. Similarly, if one critiques Obama's economic policies and calls them "corporatist," that's easily taken to mean one is calling Obama himself a "corporatist," which again is often taken to be demonization.

While I still think my point was sound (which Reifowitz never responded to, though I was just some nobody commenter so I can't blame him for not engaging in extended argument), I didn't state it as well as I should have. What I should have said is: calling Obama a war criminal is demonizing him; calling his economic policies corporatist (or pro-austerity, conservative, or whatever) just is calling Obama himself a corporatist (austerina, conservative), which--at least on a liberal blog--is also demonization. To put it in broader terms: any harsh criticism of Obama's policies is an insult to him, because if accusing a politician of promulgating evil through their policies is not an insult, nothing is. This means that calls to not insult Obama personally or to not demonize him, while seemingly "neutral" and targeted merely at rhetoric, are in reality calls to not make certain kinds of criticisms. Minor critiques of specific policies are probably OK; broad-based critiques of major policy initiatives are iffy; harsh criticisms are disallowed.

Now, perhaps one might justify such a dictum against too-harsh criticism of Obama, such as Reifowitz's arguments that he's the standard-bearer of liberalism, is symbolically important to black Americans, etc. But at the very least, we should be honest about what we're arguing for: not an end to certain types of rhetoric, but an end to certain kinds of criticism.

Now then, what does this detour have to do with the tone argument?

As I've said, one of the issues here is that people who discuss the tone argument tend to speak in generalities. Cross says that sometimes people are too angry, and are "being a jerk." But when, precisely, is this? Almost by definition, we can agree that it's wrong to be "too angry"--the entire debate is about what counts as being "too angry." Similarly, Martin says that we shouldn't "attack" each other, but what precisely counts as an "attack"?

I'm also speaking in generalities here, so let's get down to brass tacks. Is it wrong to call someone a sexist, or a racist?

As far as I can tell, there are three ways Cross and especially Martin can answer this question:
(a) No, it's not wrong, because "sexist" (or "racist," "homophobe," and the like) isn't an insult.
(b) Yes, it's wrong, but instead you should just say that someone "has sexist/racist views," and that's fine.
(c) Yes, it's always wrong to assert that the person you're talking to is sexist/racist/etc in any way, shape, or form.

I will discuss these possible responses in turn.

III

So the first way someone could answer my question is: "Calling someone a sexist (racist, etc) isn't an insult." To compare, Reifowitz could respond to me in a similar way, that calling Obama a war criminal is fine because that's not an insult.

This hypothetical response by Reifowitz, however, is self-evidently absurd. Calling someone a war criminal is extremely insulting. Indeed, it's safe to say that calling someone a war criminal is more insulting than calling them stupid, or ugly, or other obvious insults. Or, to put it another way, since war crimes are evil, accusing someone of being a war criminal is accusing them of being evil.

"Sexist," "racist," and the like are insults in a similar way. They're not mere labels for ideologies--at least, not anymore. Our modern culture assumes that sexism, racism, and the like are not merely wrong but evil--perhaps less evil than committing war crimes, but evil nonetheless. Thus, calling someone a racist is different in kind from calling someone, say, a "free trader" (outside of certain circles, at least). The latter is an economic policy that we (mostly) think is legitimate to defend; the former is (mostly) considered a scourge that should be wiped out, not debated calmly.

The best proof of the inherently insulting nature of these words is the reaction of those on the receiving end of them. Brad Torgersen, one of the "Sad Puppies" leaders Martin was arguing against, once said:

Words like "racist" and "misogynist" are presently code for "not part of the human equation" thus any man or woman who can be successfully labeled these things, is cut off from polite circles, perhaps even driven out of the workplace, or worse.

I didn't find a similar explicit quote from another major Sad Puppies leader, Larry Correia, but try perusing any of his posts on the topic (such as this one) and it's clear he shares the sentiment.

But really, it's not necessary to deluge you with examples. Observe any internet argument (or real-life argument for that matter) where one of the participants is called a racist or sexist. They will almost inevitably react as if they were insulted, and that's because they were insulted. Racism is frequently referred to as a "disease" or worse. If it's not insulting to call someone a racist, I'm not sure what an insult is.

To be clear: I fully agree that racism is a disease--indeed, that that analogy underplays it--and I think the fact that "racist" (and "sexist" etc) is considered an insult is a sign of great progress. But we need to face the fact that it is an insult. So the first possible response, that it's OK to call people racists because that's not an insult, is a complete non-starter.

IV

The second possible response is to argue that, while "sexist" or "racist" are insults and thus should not be used, instead you can merely say that someone "has sexist views" or similar. The motivation behind this might be something as follows: a racist is something you are, while racist views are something you hold; therefore, calling someone a "racist" is an insult (and thus wrong) while accusing someone of "holding racist views" is merely a description of their ideology. The analogy to the Obama case would be asserting that it's OK to say that Obama has "committed war crimes," you just can't call him a "war criminal."

That analogy should make the absurdity of this defense plain. If you've committed war crimes, you're a war criminal; there's no mysterious extra thing you need to gain to become one. Similarly, if you have racist views, you're a racist--there's no "extra" character trait or whatever that makes you one.

While I think this is essentially obvious, I'll back myself up by liberally quoting a fantastic 2013 post by the journalist Ta-Nehisi Coates. In this post, Coates argues against Wes Alwan, who in defending Alec Baldwin from being called a "bigot" (see this for some details) said:

In fact, the primary function of a word like "bigot" is to very precisely exclude more conflicted, doubtful states of mind, as in: a bigot is "a person who is obstinately or intolerantly devoted to his or her opinions and prejudices; especially: one who regards or treats the members of a group (as a racial or ethnic group) with hatred and intolerance" (Mirriam-Webster). . . . accusing someone of being close-minded and un-persuadable requires that they adamantly hold the beliefs in question in the first place: it cannot be the case that they're conflicted or akratic - that for example they sincerely favor gay rights as a matter of principle yet betray this principle during bouts of homophobic rage.

Coates responds (I'm giving a very long quote because it's great, but for my purposes the second and especially third paragraphs are the most important):

Very few white people in the 19th century--indeed very few slave-holders--were without conflict and without doubt when considering black people. Many of them were persuadable and akratic. (A great word, by the way.) Some manumitted the enslaved. Others taught them to read, even though it was against the law. Others bore children by them, and sometimes even loved those children. And others still argued that white people should be enslaved too. These people were conflicted, complicated and bigoted. I suspect that the same is true for many homophobic "love the sinner, hate the sin" bigots today. 

Perhaps we are now entering a new age wherein we will do violence to our language and Osama Bin Laden will no longer be a terrorist, but "a person who enjoyed a career killing innocent people." Rush Limbaugh will not be a racist, but "a man who has made a career saying racist things." Nathan Bedford Forrest will not have been a white supremacist but "someone who seemed to believe that things would be better if white people held most of the power in our society." Louis Farrakhan will not be an anti-Semite but "someone who exhibits a pattern of making comments against people who identify themselves as Jewish." 

I am doubtful that such an age is dawning. In the meantime, I hope a self-identified "self-critiquing liberal" like Alwan--and I mean this--will see that while some people reach for labels simply to conduct a mythical witch-hunt, others reach for labels because in their world witches are very real, and are not the hunted, but the hunters.

I will add one thing. What's important in the end is not the semantics of what "bigot," "racist," or "sexist" mean. What's important is the moral status of "making a career saying racist things," or more pertinently, believing racist/sexist/etc. things. As long as the latter is generally considered to be bad in itself (which I indeed believe it to be, but arguing for that here would take me too far afield), then accusing someone of holding racist views is very much an insult. So option (b), too, is a non-starter; no matter what your definition of "racist" is, it's impossible to say that someone's opinions and statements are racist without insulting them.

V

The final response--which, for reasons argued above, I believe is the only self-consistent position tone argument defenders can take--is: Yes, it's insulting to call someone a sexist/racist or a holder of sexist/racist views, and therefore you shouldn't do that. The analogy would be Reifowitz hypothetically arguing that, since it's insulting to call Obama a war criminal, you shouldn't call Obama a war criminal.

Let me clarify something. This hypothetical Reifowitz is not making the case that Obama isn't a war criminal. He is instead arguing that it's wrong even to make the case that Obama is a war criminal. Similarly, the tone argument defender here is not merely saying it's wrong to falsely accuse people of being sexists, which is so obvious as to be almost banal. Rather, they're saying that, even if you honestly believe someone is being sexist or racist, it is wrong to say so. Presumably, one should just make much more mild criticisms (perhaps "I disagree with your contention that whites are genetically more intelligent than blacks").

Now, Cross, Martin, and other tone argument defenders clearly believe their stance is "neutral," in that they'd likely insist they're not forbidding people from stating their opinions--they're merely requiring that those opinions not be insulting (as Martin says, "we can disagree with each other without attacking each other"). The problem is that some opinions are by their nature insulting; sometimes, it's impossible for us to say what we truly think about an argument without attacking the person who made it. As children, some of us (especially women) were taught "If you can't say something nice, don't say anything at all." This admonition at least has the virtue of being honest in its intention to censor. At the very least, defenders of the tone argument should be similarly honest.

Well, that last bit was pretty insulting, so I guess I just violated the tone argument myself. Let me back up a bit, then, and give a less rhetorical argument against this third option--that is, I will defend calling people racist or sexist if one honestly believes them to be.

First of all, note that "racist" and "sexist" aren't the only words that, while theoretically referring to ideologies, are in reality insults. "Fascist" is similar in that these days it tends to mean "person who holds a political position I disagree with"--and it would clearly be disingenuous to call someone a fascist and then deny that you meant to insult them. Republicans insult Obama by calling him a "socialist" all the time, and "liberal" and "conservative" are certainly insults within certain circles. As implied above, "pro-censorship" is very insulting for many, and beyond politics, being a "creationist" is almost as bad as being a "racist" in much of the internet.

One way to understand what's going on here is the "Overton Window." The basic idea is that, in public discourse, we can consider each idea as having a certain degree of mass acceptability, ranging from "unthinkable" and "radical" to "popular" and "policy." All of these ideological terms that are also insults refer to beliefs that, either in the culture at large or in particular subcultures, fall in the "unthinkable" camp. In this regard, Torgersen is only somewhat exaggerating when he says calling someone a "racist" takes them out of the human condition. What you're really doing is accusing them of holding an unthinkable view, a view so out-there that only a bad person could possibly hold it. The goal, of course, is to use peer pressure in order to encourage them to abandon that view.

And you know what? It works. While racism and sexism are still massive problems in our society, it's much less common for people to be explicitly, unambiguously racist or sexist than it was 40 or 50 years ago. This is progress, of a sort. And it was accomplished precisely because it's no longer considered acceptable to (openly) hold these views, and people who express them in public are shamed for doing so. If this public shaming does not take place, if people who say racist or sexist things are met with a mere "I politely disagree with you," the Overton Window will shift and bigotry will move from being "unthinkable" to "radical" or even "acceptable." Indeed, we can see this process occurring in real time with Donald Trump's presidential campaign.

Your average internet commenter is far less influential than Donald Trump, of course. Nevertheless, if people are not consistently called out and shamed for saying racist or sexist things, racism and sexism will become more acceptable to express. (Spend enough time looking at the chat of your average popular twitch stream if you want proof.) To put it bluntly: insults are one of the ways cultural standards are enforced, they are extremely effective at doing so, and it is morally justifiable to use them if those cultural standards are themselves good and essential. To oppose their use is not to be neutral, but to favor the views that the insults are targeting (because your position will move them toward the "acceptable" category). Sometimes, this is the right course of action; "atheist" used to be an insult par excellence, after all. But sometimes it isn't. Since anti-bigotry is an extremely important cultural standard, is is morally acceptable to insult people by calling them bigots.

VI

So am I advocating a free-for-all against suspected bigots? Is it OK to not merely call them bigots, but also to threaten violence, tell them to kill themselves, etc.? No, of course not. But the wrongness of that kind of rhetoric is not that it's insulting, but that it's unnecessarily insulting.

I will explain. The problem with the tone argument is that it blocks people from expressing certain views that are inherently insulting, under the guise of merely targeting rhetoric. But sometimes, insulting rhetoric is not used to express a view, but is merely substance-less rage.

Nothing is gained by telling someone to kill themselves or threatening violence against them. (Contrast this with something like "Fuck off," which makes clear that the bigot is not welcome in the community in a way nothing else can and is therefore an acceptable insult.) It is publicly shaming them, yes, but unnecessarily so; merely calling them a bigot is sufficient for that purpose. All they do is, maybe, allow the insulter to let off some steam while likely negatively impacting the mental state of the one being insulted. That is why it shouldn't be done.

The key point here is that the line between "you're a racist" and "kill yourself" is not that the latter is more insulting; calling someone "stupid," after all, is probably less insulting than "racist" but is still unnecessary. The line is: does your insult actually express a substantive opinion, or is it merely letting off steam? "Your'e a racist" expresses an opinion that cannot be stated in any other way. "You're stupid" is just pointless grandstanding.

Another important note here is that these substance-less insults are not different in kind from any other sort of shallow argument. If, while engaging in debate, I ignore my opponent's point to attack their spelling/grammar, or their username, or I bring up something entirely unrelated, I am similarly doing something wrong. Insubstantial insults are worse to the extent that they tend to hurt peoples' feelings (I mean this non-ironically for the record), but their insulting quality merely exacerbates their wrongness; the wrongness itself comes from their lack of substance.

To summarize: the tone argument is a bad argument because expressing certain opinions is inherently insulting. Insults are not necessarily bad, and are only bad if they do not express a substantive view.