Imagine you’re at a party in Chicago. You’re having a great time, and then this guy Johnny comes in that is a friend-of-a-friend’s cousin’s fraternity brother… someone people know but not too well. Johnny is wearing a Chicago Cubs jersey. Initially he starts blending in, talking to folks, laughing, having a good time. Before long, you notice that people are beginning to avoid him, walking away while he’s talking, rolling their eyes when they hear his sexist jokes, politely laughing and then scurrying off. Soon, the party’s host takes him off to the side and tells him maybe he should cool things down – maybe lay off the jokes about how people look, etc. He tells the host “Hey man, don’t be such a wuss. I have as much right to have fun as anyone else here. Everyone is doing their thing… I’m doing mine! Besides, those people are just giving me a hard time because I’m a Cubs fan. They obviously hate the Chicago Cubs.”
Johnny goes on making jokes about what some of the guys are wearing, he grabs girls from behind, he mocks and laughs at people, he gets more and more drunk and obnoxious until someone finally confronts him, and now there’s a fight about to happen. Sensing the looming catastrophe, the host tells him he has to leave.
As he’s being shown to the door, the room erupts in applause as the entire rest of the party cheers his departure. Walking out the door, Johnny shouts to the room behind him “Fuck you people… you just hate the Chicago Cubs!”
It’s easy to spot Johnny’s misattribution of contempt here. Clearly it was his behavior, NOT his jersey, that people found contemptible. But what isn’t so easy to spot is what Johnny might accomplish by doing this. The folks at the party will know why he was thrown out, but *everyone else Johnny talks to* will hear a different tale. They will hear that he went to a party with his Cubs jersey on and got thrown out. They will hear that the host threw out the guy with the Cubs jersey on. They will hear that someone tried to pick a fight with the guy wearing a Cubs jersey. While there were only maybe 20 people at the party who know the truth, potentially hundreds of people will hear about the violent anti-Cubs bias that took place there. And for those at the party, it might seem beyond believable that this story would ever grow legs on its own, but if Johnny tells enough people, and if he can get *anyone* at the party to confirm that yes, someone did try to pick a fight with him and yes, he did get thrown out… then the story will become reality. The host will be pegged as a guy with a chip on his shoulder against the Cubs, as will the guy who confronted Johnny. Everyone at the party will be branded Cub-haters, and Johnny will go from villain to victim. He might even rise to hero status if he brags enough about how he stood up to all those Cub-haters!
Misattribution of Contempt is a tactic that combines diversion, delegitimization, unfalsifiability, and the correlation/causation fallacy. It works like this: Insist that someone has an issue with you that is entirely unrelated to the actual issue they have with you. Your phony issue may or may not be true, and it may or may not even be related to the genuine issue. But it doesn’t matter – if you can make the case that someone hates you because you’re a Cubs fan, then *any legitimate beef they have with you* can be chalked up to an anti-Cubs grudge.
The RightWing Propaganda Machine began using this tactic shortly after the 2016 election, and it has since become their go-to tactic of choice. Every right-wing media outlet from Fox News to Breitbart to InfoWars to Drudge Report has been blasting the same message: “Democrats hate Trump, the mainstream media really hates Trump, and deep state Republicans hate him even more!” Right now the main defense against his impeachment hearings is that they are nothing more than the final result of a years-long campaign of hatred, led by Adam Schiff, to remove a duly elected President because they can’t stand him. They’ve been trying to impeach him for years, and they’ve been looking for any excuse to do so.
Here’s why this line is so sinister. For one – it doesn’t matter who hates who. It is possible that every Democrat in the world hates Trump, that the mainstream media hates him, and that establishment Republicans hate him, and he *still is guilty* of fraud and bribery. All of those things can be true simultaneously. Therefore it’s irrelevant how people feel. One has nothing to do with the other. (Our party host might hate the Cubs and he might not… it’s irrelevant to the fact that Johnny acted like an asshole!) Correlation does not equal causation, so it doesn’t matter. It is possible to hate someone AND for them to be guilty of a crime.
Second, the attribution is unverifiable and unfalsifiable. They make no attempt to verify it, and how can anyone disconfirm it? No criteria is ever offered by which someone can prove they do or do not hate Trump. So the proposition is arbitrary.
Third, it is normally used as a full diversion, meaning that the hatred attributed to his opponents becomes the subject of conversation rather than the substance of the discussion, which is generally Trump’s behavior. (As a general rule, I use “Trump” as a single word to describe Donald Trump and all who fall into his orbit, like Giuliani or Barr).
Fourth, it dishonestly characterizes his opponents as hateful people, motivated by contempt rather than values.
And finally, let’s not forget… sometimes hatred is fully appropriate. I do not hate Trump, but I do hate authoritarianism. I hate to see the good sacrificed on the alter of the bad. I hate to see people who have spent a lifetime honorably serving their nation, becoming experts in their field, and exercising courage being slandered and professionally crushed by people who have done nothing for their nation, simply because someone won a popularity contest. I hate to see Putin’s wildest dreams coming true. I hate to see truth get waved off as “fake news” and propaganda being elevated to the point of acceptance. I hate to see science get shown to the door while conspiracy theories begin to shape federal policy. I hate all these things, but none of that hatred motivates or informs my choices or hampers my ability to calibrate the truth of propositions.
When you hear Kellyanna Conway, Tucker Carlsen, Sean Hannity, Rush Limbaugh and their ilk go on and on about how <insert boogeyman here> just hates Trump and they hate the fact that they lost the election and they hate <insert whatever here>, keep in mind these things. First, contempt can be entirely appropriate. Second, contempt is irrelevant to facts. Third, contempt isn’t the issue – behavior is.
The misattribution of contempt is a polemic tactic. Don’t be fooled by it. It’s designed to shift the lens away from someone’s behavior onto someone else’s motivations. When you hear someone say “Oh, those Democrats just HATE Trump!” your answer should be “So what?”.
The Mischievous Unknown 