In this episode of the People Who Read People podcast, I interview Dr. Omar Wasow (here’s his Twitter), an Assistant Professor in the Department of Politics at Princeton University, and author of a paper entitled “Agenda Seeding: How 1960s Black Protests Moved Elites, Public Opinion, and Voting.” In that research, he found that civil rights-related violent activity in the United States in the 60s shifted public opinion and voting more conservative/Republican. I ask Dr. Wasow about his research, his methods for finding correlations, public reactions to his work (which have included some negative reactions), and what lessons are in his work for modern-day activists. We also talk about the role of news and social media in political movements, and about Trump-related worst-case scenarios.
This interview was the second I’ve done on the subject of protests and riots; in the last episode, I interviewed a Portland antifa/BLM protester.
A transcript is below.
Links to this episode:
Topics discussed include:
- How the United States turned toward more conservative, “law and order” stances in the wake of MLK being assassinated and the violent street protests and riots in response to that.
- The mechanisms by which peaceful protests are more persuasive and impactful than using violence
- The news/media coverage of protests and riots and how that shapes public opinion, and how today’s media is different from the 60s.
- Social media’s effects, positive and negative, on politics and public opinion
- Negative responses of some liberals and BLM activists to their interpretation of Wasow’s work
- Lessons that are present in Wasow’s work for modern-day social justice activists
- Worst-case Trump-related scenarios
Related content and resources:
- PBS interview of Omar Wasow
- June 2020 Washington Post piece by Wasow about these topics
- NJ.com article about negative responses to Wasow’s study
- “The protesting of a protest paper,” about negative responses to Wasow’s study
- NYMag.com article by Jonathan Chait that talks about someone apparently getting fired for tweeting about Wasow’s study.
- Vox piece by German Lopez “How violent protests against police brutality in the ’60s and ’90s changed public opinion“
- Article that talks about the lessons from Nazi Germany and how socialist street violence was a factor that helped the Nazis.
- WaPo op-ed: No police reforms would be complete without gun reforms.
TRANSCRIPT
[Note: transcripts will contain some errors.]
Zach: Welcome to the People Who Read People podcast. I’m Zachary Elwood.
In this episode, recorded on September 15th, 2020, I talk to Dr. Omar Wasow, who is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Politics at Princeton, and who has a PhD in African-American Studies from Harvard. Wasow had a paper published earlier this year titled “Agenda Seeding: How 1960s Black Protests Moved Elites, Public Opinion and Voting.”
His research showed that, in the 60s, civil rights-related protests and riots, when violent, made public opinion and voting skew more conservative. The conservative shift in voting was in some areas as high as 8%.
A little background here: in the early 60s there were mainly peaceful civil rights protests. Whereas in 1968, Martin Luther King Jr was assassinated, which led to a good amount of anger and violent riots.
This study came out this year, and got some press, as you’d expect with the protests and riots that have been happening about violence by police. His work generated some bad vibes amongst some people, who seemed to interpret Wasow’s work as saying, “Don’t get angry.” One piece about Wasow was titled, “No good deed goes unpunished for a Princeton professor.”
In another incident, a political data analyst named David Shor, who was liberal and had worked for President Obama’s reelection campaign, tweeted out a summary of Wasow’s work, which read, “Post-MLK-assasination race riots reduced Democratic vote share in surrounding counties by 2%, which was enough to tip the 1968 election to Nixon. Non-violent protests increase Dem vote, mainly by encouraging warm elite discourse and media coverage.” Some people were upset by this. To quote from a piece about this incident writtten by Jonathan Chait:
“In certain quarters of the left, criticizing violent protest tactics is considered improper on the grounds that it distracts from deeper underlying injustice, and shifts the blame from police and other malefactors onto their victims.”
End quote.
Long story short; some people accused Shor of insensitivity and racism and the data science and consultancy firm that employed Shor fired him. If you’d like to read more about this incident, I recommend Jonathan Chait’s article titled “The Still-Vital Case for Liberalism in a Radical Age.”
So in this episode, I talk to Dr. Wasow about his work, and the strategies he used. We also talk about people’s reactions to the work, and about our current political situation and his thoughts about the future.
Off topic a bit, and we don’t talk about it, but Dr. Wasow has an interesting software background; In 1995, Newsweek named Wasow as one of the “fifty most influential people to watch in cyberspace.” In 1999 he created BlackPlanet, one of the first major social networking sites.
You can check out Dr. Wasow’s website at omarwasow.com. That’s W A S O W. He’s on Twitter at @owasow.
If you like this interview, you might like my last interview, in which I talked to a self-described “antifa”, who defended some of the violent activities at BLM-related Portland, Oregon protests, like fighting with cops, throwing things at cops, setting fires, and resisting arrest.
If you want to learn more about the People Who Read People podcast, you can go to www.readingpokertells.video and get episode summaries and links. Maybe worth mentioning, too; this interview is a bit off topic from the general theme of my podcast, which is usually focused on reading and predicting behavior. But I saw it as tying in with my last interview, which was about understanding the behavior of violent protesters. Also, I mainly just think this is an important topic right now for the United States, and want to contribute to the conversation.
Okay, here’s the interview.
Zach: Thanks for coming on Dr. Wasow.
Omar: Thank you for having me.
Zach: So let’s start out with what got you interested in wanting to study the impacts of protests and riots?
Omar: So when I was growing up in New York in the eighties and nineties, I was struck by how much the kind of my coming of age was defined by, you know, kind of a tough on crime era of politics. And in particular there was like a contrast between my parents coming of age.
They had been activists involved in civil rights activities and you know, my father had gone to register voters in Mississippi and I just couldn’t quite figure out like how had we gone from the victories of the civil rights era in their coming of age period to this era of law and order in my coming of age.
And that question of how we went from civil rights to law and order was just. Something I’d been kind of looping on since I was a teenager. And at a certain [00:05:00] point, after spending about a dozen years working as an entrepreneur in social media, I decided to go back to school, uh, to pursue a PhD to try and understand like what led to the rise of law and order politics.
Zach: Did you have a theory going in about what you’d find when you studied the 1960s era?
Omar: I I didn’t have a clear theory actually. I mean, there were a couple of things I was very interested in. Uh, you know, I was trying to understand the rise of, of the war on drugs and rise of what we now are calling mass incarceration.
Um, but this is about 15 years ago and I understood that there was a kind of post civil rights rise of law and order. And so it struck me that they were likely linked, um, and that at least part of the rise of law and order was a reaction to the success of civil rights. But I didn’t have a clear specific theory.
And that’s in part the gift of going back to school as you can kind of read widely and, um, explore lots of different angles. And so that’s, you know, in some ways if, I think if I’d had a clearer answer, I might not have gone back to school. [00:06:00] Um, I was going back to sort of try and figure out like there’s gotta be a better explanation.
Zach: Oh. So just to clarify, when you say swinging to the law and order side, what exactly are you referring to there?
Omar: Um, there are a couple of things that, that I’m talking about there. So one is in 1964, Barry Goldwater runs for president of the United States. And with the core things he’s campaigning on is that he’s a law and order candidate.
Um, and law and order as a, as a kind of campaign slogan had been popular in the South for decades, but it hasn’t, hadn’t really become a kind of national campaign slogan. And so it was interesting that Goldwater ran on it, but Goldwater lost massively to Lyndon Johnson. And so it’s possible that this kind of bubble of law and order as a slogan might not have carried the day later on.
It did. And in particular, there’s a key moment in 1966, uh, in California. Ronald Reagan is running for governor against an incumbent Pat Brown, who’s [00:07:00] popular, but Reagan wins and Reagan runs on law and order. And, and so that’s now a moment where we see law and order going from being a losing issue to a winning issue for Reagan.
Um, and then ultimately Nixon runs in 1968 for the presidency, again, partly on law and order and wins the presidency. And so. Part of it is just kind of campaign rhetoric and, you know, it’s, it sort of means different things to different people. But in practice, I think the kind of offer or the promise that’s being made by Nixon or Reagan is I am going to support maintaining, uh, peace and, you know, sort of backing police against protestors and cracking down on, you know, these, these violent uprisings.
And, and that’s I think, kind of the core of it. And there’s another dimension to it, which is a little more subtle, which is that the success of the Civil Rights movement kind of destabilizes a social hierarchy, right? So there’d been a kind of stable order, kind of whites on top, blacks on the bottom, and the Civil Rights Movement as an egalitarian movement trying to sort of [00:08:00] equalize blacks and whites in the society kind of challenges that that hierarchy.
So I think for some people particularly who kind of read it in, uh, more racially coded ways, it’s about restoring the, the kinda the old social hierarchy. So it’s not just about backing law or law enforcement. Mm-hmm. It’s about, mm-hmm. Maintaining, uh, the social hierarchy. To be clear, it’s a moment where particularly in, as you get later in the sixties and early seventies, there are anti-Vietnam protests.
There are other events that are perceived to be, there’s a sense that the social fabric is tearing. There also are assassinations of the Kennedy Brothers and then Martin Luther King. So there’s a lot that’s going on that’s unsettling in the society. Um, but among the most powerful is a sense that there’s this, you know, this kind of movement, this insurgent, this African American insurgency against the old order.
So law and order, I think for some people literally means like, you know, we just want things to be more peaceful, but for other people it means we’re gonna kind of [00:09:00] restore the old racial order.
Zach: Right. It has, has different connotations in different contexts, but yeah, like you said, it’s maybe worth pointing out that with all the violence and, and assassinations, it wasn’t just a race thing or even a political thing, there were many people feeling like things were falling apart at, at certain points in, in time.
Yeah.
Omar: I, I, I looked at one survey, and this was before the 1968 election, presidential election. And, uh, people were asked, you know, do you feel like law and order has broken down in society? And something like 80% of Americans said Law and order has broken down. So that’s America’s less polarized then than now, but, but still 80% is a very high percentage.
So there is a sense broadly of. Things being a little, you know, something’s kind of outta control. And, and it’s also important to note that in that era, the protests that escalate to violence are, can in some cases are just vastly larger than what we’re seeing now. So, for example, [00:10:00] um, in the protests that have violence in Los Angeles in 65, there are an estimated 3000 incidents of arson.
Um, there are about 4,000 people arrested. The police and National Guard shoot dozens of, uh, citizens. So it’s, you know, these are almost kind of low grade civil war kinds of events. And, and that reflects both the, you know, kind of anger that people have, ag against Jim Crow and segregation, and also the degree to which the state response was often, you know, quite repressive.
And so, so that’s part of, I think, what’s going on when people are unsettled by what’s happening. It’s, it’s, it’s at a different scale than what we’re seeing now.
Zach: It also seems like there’s different categories of things because it seems like we’ve become so desensitized to some things like mass shootings, for example.
So like, even though people were bothered by, you know, for example, assassinations and shootings back in the, in the sixties, it almost seems like now we’re just so desensitized to that aspect [00:11:00] and, you know, more sensitive maybe to other areas that haven’t happened in a while. But it just seems like, you know, you can, you can imagine those ma the mass shootings that we deal with now happening back in the sixties and just people losing, you know, losing their minds.
And now it’s just become so every day for us.
Omar: That’s right. I mean, I sometimes think about it as a, a kind of, you know, if you worked at a slaughterhouse, you could go and slaughter animals and have a burger for lunch and that wouldn’t be a big deal. But if you’re somebody who has, you know, is, is uh, is a civilian who doesn’t spend time at a slaughterhouse, you know, you might be scared straight from eating meat for months if you saw, you know, the slaughtering of animals.
And, and similarly, you know, as you were saying, we kind of habituate to violence and so, or, or more generally to death. Right? We’re in a moment right now where there are approximately a thousand people a day dying of COVID. But that has now just become a kind of background, right. You know, hum in our society, whereas one shooting in a [00:12:00] protest in Portland, uh, can dominate the news for several days.
Right, right. And that’s, and so if we were kind of strict utilitarians, we might say, well, the thousand deaths is certainly more important than the one death. But that’s, that’s not really how, as you note, you know, human psychology or the media work.
Zach: Right. Then you’ve got, you know, civilian deaths of, of people that the US government has killed overseas.
And that, you know, it’s like, there’s so many things that Right. Depending on what, what the winds are that, that we could be, um, yeah. Focusing on. So if you had to sum up your findings in, in like a, a layman using layman language, how, how big an impact would you say that violent protests and riots have?
Omar: So I think it’s useful to kind of begin with just like a simple question of why do people protest, right?
And it’s like there’s some injustice and people are engaging in action taking to, you know, the public square or the, or the streets to try and raise awareness about that, that issue and what we see, you know, across American history, right? I mean, this is like in the first amendment, right? There’s a kind of a, you have [00:13:00] a right to, to assemble.
Is that this kind of embodied speech showing up and, and, and trying to, you know, raise the profile of your, your issue is. You know, it’s a, it’s a kind of funny thing, right? ’cause almost nobody directly observes a protest. And so the way protests often work is through the media. And what I found in my research is that protests that were big and peaceful could be effective.
I. But, uh, oftentimes the media didn’t really pay that much attention to a protest in which there wasn’t much drama. I, I, there’s a, i I was reading a history of, uh, news and there’s this one quote from a reporter who says, this unprecedented picket line in Hattiesburg, Mississippi, uh, is a dull story. Blood and guts are news, right?
And so violence is a very powerful way of capturing the media’s attention. But the challenge, and this is what I find later in my work, is that, you know, the, the people who are, uh, instigating violence are often [00:14:00] portrayed in the media as the bad guy. And so when protesters are largely peaceful and, you know, you see the, uh, segregationist police shooting fire hoses at protesters or, uh, sticking dogs on protesters, you get very sympathetic media coverage, uh, oftentimes nationally and even internationally.
And so when the state is engaging in violence against protesters, uh, who are. Perceived to be peaceful. It helps the protest movement, although individual protesters are obviously at risk of injury and trauma and death. Conversely, when protesters engage in more aggressive resistance to that kind of state repression, and you have either protestor initiated violence or both protestor initiated violence and state violence together, that gets covered more as a crime story.
It’s not a story. Mm-hmm. About a redress of rights. It’s a story about crime and riots. Um, and that tends to move, uh, public opinion. As we were talking about kind of a concern about law and order. So now to come to the [00:15:00] heart of your question, right? So how much is a protest moving, say voting behavior? What I found was that nonviolent protests increased if you were near, within about a hundred miles of a nonviolent protest, with the assumption that gets covered on the media and kind of helps shape public opinion that those counties that were near nonviolent protests vote about one to two percentage points more liberally and counties that were near protests that escalate to violence.
But again, protest are initiated violence here, I find those counties vote about two to eight percentage points more conservatively.
Zach: Mm-hmm. So two to eight, that’s a pretty big, uh, percentage point. Yeah. Um, so you used a pretty clever idea for figuring out how to study, how the protests affected these different regions, different local areas.
You used the weather, and can you talk a little bit about that and how you arrived on that solution?
Omar: Yeah, so, you know, a classic thing that almost everybody has heard right, is that, uh, you know, correlation is not the same thing as causation. And so in some of my analyses, I. [00:16:00] I think a, a pretty strong case that I’m comparing in the initial analysis, a county to itself over time.
And we find that, you know, that positive relationship between nonviolent protests and more voting for the Democratic party and, and a kind of conservatizing effect of protests, uh, that escalate to violence because I’m carrying, comparing a county to itself, it controls for a bunch of things that are kind of the traits of that county.
Plus I’m controlling for a bunch of other things. But even with that, it’s still hard to know, are you really picking up a causal effect of protests? And so what I do, so what we really want, if we could, you know, we, we had God-like powers, we would wanna randomly assign protests to different counties and then sort of see like a medical study did the counties that had a protest, you know, behave differently, uh, in an election than the ones that didn’t have a protest?
And we can’t do that obviously, but what I. Do use is rainfall where there’s a lot of evidence. Uh, both I find in kind of archival newspaper accounts, but also in [00:17:00] other social science that when it rains intuitively fewer people go outside. And that dampens gatherings everything from tea party gatherings to, uh, you know, protests in the sixties.
And so by using rainfall, I’m able to kind of approximate random assignment of protests. In particular, I focus on a set of violent protests that follow Martin Luther King Jr’s assassination in April of 1968. So there’s, there’s a brief period in April, uh, following his assassination where there are about 137 protests that include protest or initiated violence.
And I basically use rainfall to predict whether a protest happens. So you can think of rainfall as being like a coin toss, randomly assigning. Some places get the protest, some places don’t. And then I see in the places that had more rainfall where there was less likelihood of being a protest, do they vote more?
Uh, like they, we expect given, you know, their, their past voting behavior, um, and the ones that had less rainfall. Uh, [00:18:00] where we expect more likelihood of a protest, do they seem to vote more conservatively and, or, you know, it could be that they vote more liberally, like, I’m running a regression here and I don’t have a a, you know, I’m just kind of testing which direction the effect might go or might there be no effect.
And what I find is that in places where there’s less rainfall, which is to say more protest activity, those places vote again about eight percentage points, six to eight percentage points more conservatively in 1968 than the ones that have more rainfall. It’s possible that rainfall, you know, is predicting voting rainfall in April is predicting voting in November.
Um, but the most obvi, you know, through some other channel. Mm-hmm. But the most obvious thing is it’s happening through protest activity. I do, I do some other robustness checks to show that it’s, it’s, it’s very unlikely to be anything but protest activity. Interesting.
Zach: Yeah. It Was that an original idea or did you see other studies that use the weather like that?
Omar: So it’s in, in economics, uh, using rainfall like, uh, as what’s called an instrument as a, as a [00:19:00] kind of, uh, a way to approximate random assignment has been used a fair amount. And then there are two economists, um, last names Margo and Collins, who used this approach of rainfall, uh, around King’s assassination to estimate a kind of a causal effect of, uh, violent protests.
So I can’t take credit for it. I mean, I, there are extensions I did to try and kind of build on that approach, and so I, I still am proud of the work I did, but, but Margo and Collins get the, get, get the credit for that, that idea of using rainfall around King’s assassination.
Zach: So compared to. Being able to study the local effects back then.
Do you think now with so much national news coverage and such a fast, continuous news cycle now that it’s possible to do that kind of study now?
Omar: It’s a great question and I, I think, I think your intuition is right, that, that our politics are increasingly nationalized. And so, you know, an event in Portland, um, might [00:20:00] have some influence nationally or an event in, you know, Minneapolis clearly has had, uh, an influence on national politics
Zach: like Fox News playing Portland,
Omar: constantly putting Portland.
That’s right. Yeah, that’s right. That’s right. Yeah. And so, so I think there’s, part of this is, uh, just that, that we have a national media and that some of these, you know, uh, and also, uh, we have social media that sort of amplifies kind of local things nationally. Um, and at the same time. I still think there are local effects.
I mean, so I’ve done some experiments around events and have found that when I look locally, I get, um, you know, people’s attitudes change when there’s been a local event, but if you look outside that local area, their attitudes don’t seem to change, right? So I think there’s, there may be something that’s kind of visceral about being somewhat close to an event, right?
If you were in Minneapolis, you might have felt sympathy for, you know, either [00:21:00] the officer or, uh, George Floyd that’s like, you know, those are local people and, uh, you also might be someone who goes out and protests, but you also might be somebody who’s freaked out about the police station being going up in flames.
And so I think there’s just something very visceral about proximity. But I also think you’re right that almost certainly the dynamics have changed, partly because our media are more national.
Zach: It’s a random thought I just had have, did you read the book by, uh, Seth, uh, Stevens Davidovich called Everybody Lies About studying Google Trends by any chance?
Omar: Um, I haven’t read that book, but I’ve read a number of his papers and, uh, and seen him talk and, and, and like his work,
Zach: it seems like you could study something, some local effects there too, like getting a sense of the concerns of people locally by searching for riot related news or protest, you know, the, the word choice, it seems like you could probably find something there too.
Yeah, just a round off. That’s exactly
Omar: right. There’s a paper that I was just looking at today by an economist who was, I think at [00:22:00] Arizona State University. He used people’s searches on Google and found that where people were searching, I think words included riot, I don’t remember what else, that people were going to local stores at lower rates.
In other words, they were shopping outside of their home less often. Um, and his intuition and, you know, I didn’t look. Deeply into the paper. So I’m not in a position to say much about it as I, as credible or not, but the but your intuition that, um, that, that Google searches would be a good way to get it.
This is right. And, um, and it would also help us get the local variation, which is sort of core to what I look at in the 1960s. And again, there’s some evidence in his work that we are seeing local effects. That there, there is a, a way in which it, it’s gonna vary. And actually his point in the paper, which is, is not inconsistent with your point about Fox, is it might be that the local effects are actually not about that you’re near the protest, but that maybe you’re in a place where it’s just getting hyped up more [00:23:00] or you’re mm-hmm.
You know, more anxious. Like, there’s this, there are these weird data points from the 2016 election where some of the people who are most concerned about immigration from Latin America are in places like, you know, Maine. And it’s just sort of like, what, what, what’s that about? You know? And I think if, uh.
If you’re at a place that’s maybe very homogenous and it’s an older population that might be more unsettling than if you’re, uh, in Texas or California, where, you know, it’s just, it’s just much more common. And so, so the fear that people might have may not be directly related to the actual, you know, any real threat.
Right. Um, but, but you’re right that that Google search will help you identify some of that variation.
Zach: And like you said, I think, yeah, social media feels like a big accelerator of various things these days. To me it’s a, it’s a big cause of, of polarization and, and anger and kind of alienation in general.
And it just seems like, yeah, the, the digital world has become such a kind of a hall of mirrors of allowing people in the Midwest to be really scared [00:24:00] about, you know, what’s happening in Portland, which is kind of a, you know, it wouldn’t have happened so much in a few decades ago. I don’t think it’s,
Omar: it’s, so, it’s interesting.
Yes. I mean, I think you, you are, you’re absolutely right. But there’s, I have a colleague, uh, and, and Andy guess, um, who’s done interesting work on social media news consumption, and it turns out, you know, you’re, you’re, you know, with a podcast and, and other things sort of technically savvy and, you know, I think of myself as somewhat technically savvy too.
It turns out most people don’t change the default page on their browser. And so that means that a huge percentage of people’s online news consumption is like Yahoo News and Microsoft News, and that actually only a relatively small percentage of people are the Hyperpartisan news consumers. And they certainly matter because they are influential and they, the loudest, uh, their voices are louder.
Um, but, but it’s also easy to miss how much that. You know, it’s actually not, um, you know, M-S-N-B-C and FOX are [00:25:00] not defining, uh, you know, what people are talking about as much as we might think. Mm-hmm. Right. And social media, and actually one other, you know, sort of funny detail. I have another colleague who’s done work on this, and it turns out the, the real effect of cable news and cable more generally is not that, uh, some people, you know, watch M-S-N-B-C and Fox as much as it is that when you move from an era where you have three channels and if you turn on the TV at 7:00 PM.
Your only choice is news to an era of cable where there are hundreds of choices. And now I can watch sports or, you know, the Real Housewives of Beverly Hills is that in the pre cable era, there were a huge number of people who were disinterested in politics, but became more engaged because they watched the evening news, because that’s all they could watch at that hour.
And as you increase choice, there’s this huge sort of center of people who are not very politically engaged, who essentially drop out of consuming news and in many ways drop out of politics. And so there’s this kind of [00:26:00] hollowing effect that the people who are left consuming a lot of news are the partisans, but it’s because the nonpartisans or the disengaged, you know, are, are, are, are being entertained.
Zach: Yeah. And then I think that’s a big factor too in the, in the social media playing a role in, in polarization, because it be, just by giving the perception of polarization, it, it leads to each side becoming more, more polarized. But anyway, that’s a, that’s a whole nother topic. We, uh, yeah. Sorry, because my colleagues have written on this, I get a little excited.
No, I, I love talking about the social media stuff. Yeah. The,
Omar: well, so, so one other thing that’s important about social media is, you know, if we think about the origins of the, this, this kind of moment of protests and, you know, why, um, do we ha, did we have this wave of unprecedentedly large protests, uh, you know, across the country?
And it’s really the video of George Floyd’s killing that sparks this. And that video is taken, the, the one in particular that, that really, uh, mobilizes people is [00:27:00] 17-year-old teenager, Darnella Frazier, who has the presence of mind to bear, witness to this act of state violence and document this moment.
And she, you know, and from what I understand, posts the video to Facebook at like two in the morning and she can’t have anticipated how. Radically this would alter the what, what, what would be kind of front and center in American politics for the months to come. And so there’s a way in which in the 1960s, if you were an activist who wanted to try and, uh, you know, elevate the public’s awareness about an issue, you had to, you had to try and organize for a, b, c to be there to document it.
And people were doing things like scheduling protests at 10:00 AM so that footage could be flown to NBC in New York in the, for the evening broadcast. I mean, there’s, there’s a lot of strategy that went into how do we get the traditional media to cover our protest? And now anybody who has a smartphone is in a position to do that kind of citizen journalism that can very powerfully change the national conversation.[00:28:00]
Zach: Right. And I think there’s, there’s a lot to say there too because there’s positive and negative aspects about that. Because without a filter, people will overreact. And we’ve seen, you know, cases of that where, like the Minneapolis incident where there were protests and riots based on basically fake news about officers killing someone.
And then there’s so many cases of that, but I think it’s important to see that there’s. Both positive and negative aspects to not having a filter and having everyone be in kind of, you know, echo chambers in a way. Definitely, definitely. Uh, we, we, we, we have to, we have to deal with both of those effects if we wanna survive as a society.
Omar: Yeah. So, I mean, I think that, that, that’s a really important point that there are, um, I mean a top line clearly. Um. You know, positive and negative effects of these technologies. And I mean, it’s sort of crazy for me to think that like the internet emerges out of this, uh, defense department project. How do we build a communication system that’s resilient to nuclear attack?
And it’s enormously [00:29:00] successful at building a resilient communications network, but it turns out to create a whole new channels of, uh, opportunity for foreign governments to attack us, right? So whether it’s, uh, uh, you know, Chinese, uh, hackers getting into either, uh, corporate or government, uh, uh, you know, databases and intellectual property or, you know, kind of Russian disinformation campaigns, um mm-hmm.
And, you know, things like WikiLeaks and, and like, so, so we weirdly kind of built the system that is now being used to attack us and it, uh, was designed to be something to protect us. So that’s sort of one crazy example of what you’re describing, this kind of dual way in which technology operates. And then the second thing I hear you.
Emphasizing, which is, is, is really important, is that we, we, you know, we’re in this moment where it used to be that there were a bunch of gatekeepers. Who helped to kind of make, there were real problems with that, right? I mean, like part of the challenge for activists in the 1960s was how do we get our issues on the national stage?
[00:30:00] And in many cases, the media paid no attention to the concerns of black people. And so the reason you engaged in protests, the reason people like, um, you know, king and Rosa Parks and others engaged in resistance to Jim Crow was to draw attention and force the media to pay attention, right? So those gatekeepers could be a barrier to more, a more democratic society.
But the, the flip side is the gatekeepers can also be a kind of stabilizing force. And so, like, there’s a great book, A
Zach: filter of bad Yeah. They filter out bad, uh, overreactions, you know, they, that’s one good thing about them.
Omar: Yeah, yeah, yeah. And so, uh, like, uh, there’s a book, uh, how Democracies Die, which points out that one of the core ways in which political parties have helped democracies maintain some stability is that.
They work to kind of keep fringier candidates off the ballot and part of what we’ve seen in the last, you know, call it. 10 to 20 years as the internet has become both more pervasive in our society. [00:31:00] And, and, and, you know, an important alternate channel for people to get attention is that it’s, you know, there’s a, a number of Q anon candidates now who are winning seats in the, um, in the house.
And that reflects not only the rise of social media and, and you know, the pervasiveness of things like conspiracy theories, but it also reflects the weakening of party’s ability to act as gatekeepers. So the, the, you know, you have an old set of institutions that aren’t as able to, you know, keep out marginal voices.
That’s a good thing in the 1960s with black activists, but it’s potentially, um, unsettling now when you have people who are, you know, kind of operating with a all sorts of groups. Yeah. You know, sort of extreme conspiracies about how the world works.
Zach: That’s what, uh, worries me about social media is it’s kind of like a technology that I don’t think the human brain is really ready for in the sense that it, it triggers so many things in us and, and, and kind of acts in a, a, a society fracturing way, you know, even though it obviously has.
Positive aspects too, and, and [00:32:00] as any communication tool does, but yeah. Okay. Let’s, uh, get back to the, uh, well, I guess we’re still on the topic a bit. Yeah. But, uh, you had talked a little bit about this, uh, and, and I think it’s important to point out, you know, how strategic and thought out a lot of the civil rights protests and campaigns were, you know, for example, you talk about this in your paper.
Yeah. And it, it’s pretty well known, but protesters. Uh, civil rights protesters did things like staged protests, near prominent media outlets to be able to get more press. They carefully staged things so that the protesters would be able to remain peaceful, but would spark obviously bad or, uh, brutal overreactions from cops or other authorities.
Uh, all these things to help win points in the public eye, you know, so that people would clearly see that they were being treated unfairly, which, you know, helps win sympathy. And another example of this is, which I still don’t think is very widely known, that, you know, Rosa Parks was part of a concerted planned activist effort, and I think many Americans still are under the depression, that she was just a random, [00:33:00] tired woman who basically didn’t get up one day, you know?
Right. Which actually I think was what I was taught in school, if I remember correctly, which was, and when I learned the truth, I was like, oh, that’s crazy. How come, you know? Right. We, we didn’t, we, we weren’t taught that. Yeah. Uh, and I think there’s all this, this hidden strategy and, and these things and why the we’re so successful.
And, and I think it plays in, you know, into your. Your study, because when I look at, uh, a lot of these things going on, like in Portland, it just, the thing that bugs me is it just seems so unplanned out and chaotic. And, you know, I, I interviewed a, a Portland Antifa, BLM protestor, and he, you know, he confirmed that it basically was chaotic.
There was no like, coherent strategy. And, you know, I think that’s what, that’s what, that’s what bothers me most of all. It just seems to me that one, the, it seems like the laziest way to try to affect change. And two, it just seems like intuitively to me, and also reading things like your study, it just, it just seems very possible that they’re hurting their calls and, and, and hurting [00:34:00] just putting, uh, society in, in some, uh, theoretically dangerous situation, especially with, you know, Trump in office right now.
But, uh, all that was a long speech, but, um, yeah. No,
Omar: no, no, no. But I think, I think it, it speaks to the kind of the core tension. So, you know, the way I think about this is every activist out on the street is kind of juggling two. Core motivations. One is to express their anger, their frustration about some injustice.
But the other is to try and kind of change the larger world. And often those are, those can be intention, right? That like if you are just angry about something, you’re not really focused on what other people think. And conversely, if you’re really focused on persuading other people, it’s, you sometimes have to put your own feelings, uh, second, right?
Which is like, can be really hard. And the moment we’re in is one where, you know, people are seeing videos of somebody shot in the back, you know, and it’s like, it’s like it’s really, it can be very enraging stuff. And then the other moment we’re in is one in which you [00:35:00] don’t need a central organizing body, like the Southern Christian Leadership Conference or the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee to bring people together and organize an event, right?
It can happen. You know, as quickly as a few text messages and thousands of people might converge on a, on a particular location. And so the challenge, you know, the gift of that, what, what a scholar named Zainab TCI calls, uh, this kind of network public square is that like it’s possible for a, you know, these highly spontaneous movements to emerge and mobilize really quickly.
And that’s very powerful. But in the absence of a kind of a centralized organizer, it also means there’s much greater chance of, you know, some degree of chaos. It also in international context, not so much in the us, means that there’s no clear leader to negotiate with the state in some cases. Um, so organizing becomes hard.
When [00:36:00] organizing is in some ways coming after the social movement, not, uh, before. And obviously in some cases, like with Black Lives Matter protests, there are people who’ve been organizing for years, so I don’t wanna suggest that they’re mutually exclusive, but protests in the internet era around the world are now, they can mobilize much more quickly, but they also are more at risk for being kind of a loose network that can be, uh, both chaotic, also infiltrated by outsiders and, and kinda harder to manage.
You know, and I think your example of Portland is a helpful one. Um, and we could look at other places too, but one of the core lessons of my work is that the media play this really powerful role in kind of shaping. The public perception of a movement. And when people are on the ground and, you know, police are potentially tear gassing people or shooting rubber bullets, that kind of repression understandably, makes people often quite angry.
And [00:37:00] then they, and you can get this escalation, but what happens in the media is that that tends to get covered as, um, you know, a clash, right? And it sort of shifts the focus away from a concern about rights. And so if I were, you know, somebody on the ground trying to help activists think about, you know, how do we, how can we be most effective?
Again, people partly have to just protect themselves. And, um, you know, if you’re angry that, that you’ve gotta, you gotta deal, you gotta, you gotta have a way to express your anger. But, but I also would want people to kind of think like a camera and try to imagine how is this going to be, what is this gonna look like on the evening news tomorrow?
And that doesn’t mean you have to change your politics, and it doesn’t mean you have to change the kind of demands you’re making, but it does mean, as people, as you know, did in the 1960s, think about what are the ways in which we can stage this event. I mean, uh, John Lewis, uh, you know, Congressman who just passed, talked about what we’re doing is dramatizing injustice.
And so the challenge for [00:38:00] organizers, the challenge for protesters is to figure out what can you do that helps to elevate the larger injustice in this society to kind of draw attention. Two, the ways in which what’s happening on the ground is not what we, uh, idealize. Right. You know, uh, a fair and equal society is in sharp contrast to, you know, this image of a man, uh, being killed before our eyes by an officer.
How do you draw tension to those, those tensions between our ideals and the reality and, and keep the, the country’s focus on that? And to the extent that protestor actions such as certain kinds of violence by protesters, the extent that becomes the story, it tends to shift away from the profound injustice of something like George Floyd being killed.
Zach: To your point about, you know, when there’s conflict initiated on both sides, uh, like in Portland for example, for a personal example, when I look at things in Portland, you know, people share clips of [00:39:00] like, oh, look at these. If these overreactions by cops look at these bad things the cops are doing. But to me it’s, it’s hard to distinguish what is going on because I, for one, the video is hard to parse sometimes.
Two, I don’t know what the protesters did right before that video, you know, so it, it, it makes sense that it, it makes everything much harder to parse. And, and if you’re, if you don’t know, then it just seems like, well, the protesters, you’re creating chaos. And I can’t make a good judgment either way of what’s, what’s right or what’s not.
Omar: Yeah, I, I think that’s right. And, and, and at, you know, at the heart of it, there’s a kind of double standard, which I know is maddening for a lot of people. You know, what I observe in the 1960s and I think is still largely true today. Is that protestors need to be almost angelic to be in the kind of position of being a good guy.
And that’s a very, it’s exceedingly high standard. It’s, again, it’s, it’s in many ways entirely unfair. But when you have an image that is, you [00:40:00] know, a young person being hit with a fire hose, uh, as happened in the 1960s, or, uh, John Lewis being beaten on the Edmund Pettus Bridge, having his head cracked open by, uh, a, a segregationist cop, those images of a clear, good guy and a clear bad guy, do a lot of work.
And is it reasonable to expect John Lewis not to fight back? No. As, as, as, as Malcolm X says, I don’t call it self-defense. I call it intelligence. Intelligence, right? Like we, we would expect you to resist somebody beating you up. And so it’s, it is entirely unreasonable that John Lewis has to. Get up there, get beat up and not fight back.
But the genius of that logic is. In suffering in the way he does and doing it in a way that is, you know, again, captured in the media. It reveals, as you said, the brutality of segregation. One of the remarkable things about the Bloody Sunday march in [00:41:00] 1965 is that it’s broadcast, uh, on a Sunday afternoon and the um.
The, the, it interrupts a documentary about the Nuremberg War crimes, uh, in Germany. And so we cut from, you know, again, kind of good guys and bad guys right here are these evil doers of World War II being tried. And then we cut to images of, uh, vigilantes and segregationist troopers beating up peaceful protestors, right?
And the, the, the kind of cognitive shock in America was so great that people around the country were moved to come to Selma and, and, and March with, with Lewis and King and others. So it is entirely unreasonable to say you need to make yourself a target of violence. Um, it is unreasonable to say you have to be almost angelic to be a good guy, but if people can pull that off, it also can be incredibly powerful for throwing into sharp contrast the injustice, the larger injustice in the society that activists are trying to make the [00:42:00] world, make the country pay attention to.
Zach: Yeah, and to your point, I mean, I think, uh, I’m probably not the only one who, who sees these things in different categories. Like when there’s a, an event that sparks a lot of, you know, angry, uh, immediately angry, uh, rioting or, or looting or whatever, that I don’t have much, I. Judgment of that. Like, that doesn’t even bother me.
I think what the, the part that bothers me, like for the, the Portland situation, for example, is, you know, it’s, it’s the people that think that are actually under the impression that they are doing something effective. You know, the, in their minds that they are strategizing and they, they are strategizing correctly.
And I, and I put that in a different category than the, it’s the people just having the angry outbursts and then there’s the people who think they are, uh, taking some strategic approach. And, and those are two different, um,
Omar: and that’s, I think one of the, the sharpest critiques of my work has been that I’m, I’m saying people need to kind of be strategic when in fact, if you’re angry and on the street, like you’re not, you’re not thinking about, you know, the evening news.
You’re not thinking [00:43:00] about a voter in November. And is it even fair? Yeah. That’s not what you’re saying at all. Yeah, well, it’s, it’s, it’s, it’s, you know, it’s something I have to sit with and, and, and, and I think. Part of what I would say is there are, there are, even, even in these movements that are, you know, kind of spontaneous and kind of internet, um, uh, driven, there are leaders and organizers and people who have a larger platform.
And what those people say I think really matters in terms of helping mm-hmm. Other people on the ground make decisions about, you know, does it make sense to light this car on fire or not? Does it make sense to, you know, smash a window or not? Does it make sense to engage in some other kind of violent resistance?
And so, so I think clearly. Even if we say on the ground, there’s a lot of chaos and maybe we’re not gonna hold any individual person accountable, although I’m, I’m, I’m comfortable with saying people make choices and they have agency and they, they can, they are, these things aren’t just happening at random, but, but certainly people who are in positions of leadership, who are speaking out, who are writing, they are in a position to sort of say, this is what’s [00:44:00] more effective, you know, for our cause.
And then I think there’s a kind of another dimension to this question, which is, it, it’s not just, um, about, I mean, lemme lemme come at this from kinda a slightly different angle, which is like, across history, we’ve seen violence be effective in lots of contexts, right? So whether you’re talking about the American Revolution or the Civil War or the Boston Tea Party, um, or any number of, you know, violent insurgencies around the world, like.
Violence can be an effective way to get what you want. And so if you are trying to advance an issue, you know, it might be that, that in some case, you know, I mean, to give a, uh, I think one of the, you know, most morally compelling ones, right? Nelson Mandela is sent to prison because he’s part of an armed insurgency against the apartheid government, right?
And or there are, uh, you know, there’s, there’s violent, there’s armed resistance under the Holocaust, uh, by, you know, there’s Jewish resistance to, to the Nazis that’s armed resistance, right? And so in those kinds of cases, we would say that seems like. You know, a pretty moral, uh, [00:45:00] claim to violence as a, as a, as a way to advance your cause.
And the, the slight difference in the US case is there’s, there’s a really vibrant media and yes, the white majority media had largely ignored the concerns of African Americans. But when things happen, they start to cover these events and, um, you know, when the protests happen. And so, so because there’s essentially a functioning civil society, even if the south is only semi democratic, it means that you have this other channel with which to make change.
And so then the tension becomes, okay, as activists, do we wanna go the Jewish resistance to the Holocaust route? Do we wanna go the American Revolution route? Or do we go the let us wage a kind of war of ideas and persuasion in the press? And it turns out that that can be a very effective technique. And what I find is that it, you, you get a lot of what you want.
You know, they, they dismantle the Civil Rights Movement, dismantles Jim Crow. It’s one of the great, uh, accomplishments of the 20th century. They do it [00:46:00] in a way that has a minimum, I would argue. I mean that there are clearly people who are injured and killed, who are civil rights activists, but I think it would be hard to imagine a less bloody revolution than the kind of war wage by civil rights activists on Jim Crow and the dismantling of Jim Crow.
So, so it’s a very powerful way of forcing change and minimizing the kind of, um, bloodshed and, and retribution that often happens in, in, in more violent conflicts.
Zach: That’s what scares me about this kind of, you know, almost normalization of, of street violence. We’ve kind of feels like we’ve entered into more recently.
And, um, it feels to me like the lead up to, um. Obviously it’s different stuff, but it feels similar to what I’ve read about the lead up to, to Nazi Germany and the normalization of street violence. And I might be being a bit hysterical about that, but, um, no,
Omar: I think, I
Zach: think that’s, I see some parallels.
Yeah, I think
Omar: it’s, it’s, it’s, it’s an important thing to, you know, my parents, uh, my [00:47:00] grandparents rather on my father’s side, you know, fled the Nazis. And so it’s, it’s, it’s, for me that’s, uh, you know, it’s, it’s, that’s in my life, not my lifetime, but it’s in my family’s lifetime. And so I think that does need to be something we hold as a, a real genuine threat.
And we do see, uh, a. You know, a significant amount of far right violence, uh, in this country, ranging from, on the one hand events like the, you know, Oklahoma bombing, um, the Murra building. And, uh, there are other kinds of events that, you know, uh, shooting, um, by Dylan Roof of nine, you know, totally welcoming, loving, uh, churchgoers in, in a, in a church, right?
And that then that kind of essentially kind of domestic terrorism is, does seem to be a, a rising threat. And, um, and, and, you know, particularly unsettling is. Prominent public officials, the president, [00:48:00] most importantly, uh, are often, you know, have stirring the pot, increasing division and praising the acts, you know, people engaging in more, um, violent, uh, vigilante acts.
So, so it, it, it is unsettling. And at the same time, I take some confidence in that, at least so far we’ve seen some prominent military leaders distance themselves. Uh, you know, after, for example, the crackdown in Lafayette Square, where Trump had this, you know, photo op and attacked, uh, brought the military into attack, peaceful protestors that military leaders distance themselves from that and are, I think, trying to not get co-opted by that kind of activity.
But it’s, it’s, it’s, it’s, it’s, you know, I think it’s, it’s, it’s, it’s a permanent threat in any democracy. And so it’s something we should always be vigilant about.
Zach: Yeah. And to, and to be more clear, maybe I, I am afraid, like one thing I’m afraid of is the normalization of, of, uh, you know, liberal, uh, anti-cop kind of protests.
Not just [00:49:00] what they’re doing, but how it will lead the right wing to respond. You know? And in the same way, if I was in the sixties and felt like there was too much, uh, too much violent. Protests and riots. I would be afraid of worst case scenarios involving what the government would do. You would do. You know that, that that’s where I’m at now, where it’s like, one, I don’t think it’s effective strategizing and I’m kind of disheartened that so many people make excuses for some of the more violent, militant stuff.
And that’s a one case. And then my second fear is, you know, what it will lead to in, in a, in a, in a broader sense. Yeah. Yeah. So I just wanna make that more.
Omar: Yeah, no, no. And I think, I think what, you know, another thing I think people have struggled with a little bit with my research is this idea that there are people who.
Both care about rights and equality and care about, uh, order and are, you know, don’t want to see rising levels of, uh, disorder or violence. And so, you know, the simplest way to [00:50:00] kind of illustrate that in the 1960s is that in 1964, Lyndon Johnson has just passed the Civil Rights Act and then wins the presidency in a landslide.
Um, but by 1968, the, you know, as I’ve mentioned earlier, like Nixon wins at running on law and order. And in order for that to, you know, for that switch to happen, there have to be voters who were Johnson voters in 64 and Nixon voters in 68. And in, in statistical analyses that are not in the paper, but that I’ve been working on this summer, the protests, you know, one of the things that’s a really good predictor of whether somebody switches from Johnson to Nixon is their attitudes about protests.
And if you think that the way. That, that, that, that we need to bring down the full force of the law against violent protests. You’re much more likely to switch from Johnson to Nixon. Um, and, and that’s actually not true in 1968 about attitudes about the Vietnam War. And interestingly, it’s not true about attitudes, about the civil rights movement that if you have, whether you have more positive or negative [00:51:00] views of the Civil rights movement, doesn’t predict switching from Johnson to Nixon.
It’s really attitudes about urban unrest, violent protests that predicts whether people are switching.
Zach: Yeah. I was kind of surprised by some of the bad reactions to your work. It seems like a lot of times these days, people take things in the worst possible interpretation. I mean, to me, you weren’t saying, like you said, you weren’t saying Don’t get angry.
You were saying for the people that want to strategize about these things, here are things to keep in mind. Yeah. You know, it’s not, and that’s two separate things. You, you’re not gonna stop people from being angry. People are gonna be angry. It’s, it’s like, it’s what do you do when you get down to strategizing about making change?
Omar: That’s a good distinction. Yeah.
Zach: Seems like there’s quite a few factors present that play a role in the, how these protests and, and things have played out. And also in people’s reaction to your work. It seems like there’s, you know, factors like Trump being president, obviously, and that causing people to be, you know, liberals to be much more angry.
Uh, understandably, uh, there’s the white guilt [00:52:00] issue and which is generally present, but that’s been increased by Trump and, and various racial tensions. And then you’ve got COVID related financial desperation and anxiety, which I think has kind of elevated the le the level of activity at these things. Do, do you see those factors being present in mm-hmm in all of these things?
Omar: Yeah, I think, um, you know, a classic problem in any protest is organizing people, coordinating them. And if everybody has a different schedule where it’s like, I gotta pick up my kids at three and I’ve got, uh, you know, uh, uh, my shift starts at six, it becomes harder to get a lot of people to show up in one place at one time in March.
Um, and so one of the things that I think contributed to the dramatic national and actually international, um, you know, 10, I think by the estimate was over 10,000 protests in the US and about 9,000 internationally, all around Black Lives Matter is that, that in some ways our schedules, uh, were a little bit more free.
That allows people who to kind of, you know, who might have been angry before [00:53:00] but had to go to work are able to kind of hit the street and make their voice heard. The other thing that I think is really powerful about this moment, that’s a little bit. An echo of Emmett Till being lynched in 1955 or Rodney King being beaten in 1992, is that the images of George Floyd were especially shocking, that seeing him cry for his mother, seeing the utterly callous indifference of Derek Chauvin, uh, officer Chauvin resting his full body weight on Floyd’s neck, like that was shocking in a way that I think angered people and moved them to action.
And yes, I think you’re right, that. There’s a kind of, uh, Trump fatigue or, or fatigue isn’t even the right word. ’cause that suggests people are kind of going to, uh, gonna kind of fail off. Yeah, settle down. It’s, uh, it’s a, it, yeah, it’s a, it’s a, it’s a Trump, uh, you know, disgust where, you know, this sort of, uh, a large portion of the public is just through with him, and he just kind of keeps stirring the pot.
And so in that moment, I think [00:54:00] all of that comes together and, and, and helps to channel, uh, people’s anger about racial inequality into mobilization and, um, directing, you know, and, and, and a kind of counter punch to, to trump’s, uh, often very violent rhetoric and aggression.
Zach: Yeah. I mean, conservatives like to mock the idea of Trump derangement syndrome, you know, like the idea that liberals have gone crazy in response to Trump, which, you know, I, in a sense, I, I think it’s true in the sense that it is an understandable reaction to having such a.
Horrible, unstable leader. Uh, there’s several ways in in which this is. Exaggerated our, our responses to, to several things. You know, both in, in good and bad ways. Right. Um, but yeah,
Omar: yeah. No, no. I think there is an anger about norms being, I mean, I think part of what’s hard for our country, but more generally, um, the people who went out to mobilize, is that there’s, I mean, at, at its core, a protest [00:55:00] isn’t a, is a way of saying.
Politics as usual is no longer acceptable, and business as usual is no longer acceptable. And we are engaging in, uh, a disruption of the status quo to try and move the world closer to the way we dream it could be and Trump’s violation of norms. You know, violation of laws often go unchecked by. The Senate by things like inspector generals.
There’s, there’s, there’s just all of this apparatus that is supposed to kind of keep our government operating within certain rules and at, at, and so I think part of what you’re, uh, rightly observing in terms of these protest movements is while the core of it is absolutely about trying to advocate for a reform of police and, and emphasizing the kind of, uh, you know, the moral claim that is Black Lives Matter.
I think there’s another element of it, which is the, the kind of norm violation and, and to be frank, you know, law violation that we see, uh, going on in [00:56:00] Washington, it it, it needs to have a, a response. It’s, yeah, it’s kind of maddening. Protests are a kind of democratic counteraction to authorities.
Zach: Yeah. And the protestor that I interviewed, um, for the last episode, he kind of confirmed that when he talked about one of, one of the reasons people, some of the people out there, obviously, you know, everyone’s got their different reasons, but some of the reasons people are out in Portland is they think that they’re fighting a encroachment of a white nationalist, fascist government.
You know, which to me is a very exaggerated, unrealistic way to look at things. But, you know, it kind of ties into many people are responding to these. So Trump related things, it’s, it’s all tied in together, in, in various ways for, for different people. Yeah.
Omar: You know, it goes back to the kind of point we were discussing earlier about to what degree should we worry about democratic erosion and the rise of more far right.
Violence, some, uh, far left violence. And, you know, and given American history, the idea of a [00:57:00] rising kind of ethnonationalist or white supremacist movement is, is both plausible in the sense that we have a lot of history of that. And, and at the same time, also maybe less plausible now because there’s this growing body of evidence that in fact, uh, an increasing number of whites are much more aligned with racial sympathy, right.
Than with, uh, anti racial antipathy. And so that’s, I think, a really important difference between now and the 1960s is we see large majorities of the country, uh, even among Republicans saying what Officer Chauvin did was wrong. Um, and even when people are condemning. Violent protests, they, uh, are often saying I sympathize or understand why people are angry and why they’re marching.
And that reflects a kind of sea change among white attitudes. It’s not. Uniform or universal, but does reflect an important shift and does, should give us some hope that the idea that there might be a kind of resurgence of, uh, a kind of Jim Crow politics, while it [00:58:00] is present to a degree already in, in a lot of the policies Trump has endorsed, is not actually supported by a majority of the country.
Right. Trump doesn’t win a majority of the vote. Um, right. And is currently trailing in polls. And so, so it, it, it’s both, you know, a real threat and you look at things like immigration policy or, uh, attacks on the census, um, or attacks on voting rights. But it’s also something where whether it’s protests or courts, there does, there has been a really vigorous counter mobilization and it’s not clear that reflects the main of a, of the American, uh, populace.
Zach: Right. I think it gets back to the point about social media being kind of a hall of mirrors showing us the worst of people, you know, and seeing the loudest, most aggressive people. You know, I’ve done, you know, I’m in a good amount of pro-Trump groups and just see horrible things, but I also recognize that those are a while.
They’re their most, the most vociferous, you know, extreme Trump supporters. They also represent a small number of percentage of, you know, [00:59:00] even amongst Trump supporters. I, I know Trump supporters and they are not like the people I see in Facebook and other words, but I feel like. The hall of mirrors that social media has created is like everyone, some people think that all Trump supporters are like that, and that even within that group, there’s people that are like kind of non-political or they just vote for Trump because he is, uh, Republican candidate.
They’re, they’re getting skewed news where they only see the best of Trump in the worst of liberals and they’re news bubbles. So I think, you know, I, even though I have very, uh, various worst case Trump fears, I, I also am not on the extreme end of, of feeling like we’re in, you know, Nazi Germany or something.
Right. Because I just feel like, you know, there’s, there’s various, uh, parts on the spectrum where you can be more afraid or less and probably on like the seven out of 10.
Omar: Yeah. I mean, I think the thing that’s, uh, one thing that can be confusing about using, you know, Nazi Germany as the reference category is that, that, that there, it’s a continuum.
Democratic erosion can look [01:00:00] like Hungary or the Philippines or Turkey or, um, any number of countries that are, you know, still have elections, still have, uh, in some cases, uh, you know, something of a free press, but maybe that’s diminishing in places like, uh, the Philippines. They’re now, you know, arresting broadcasters under.
Bogus charges a more slow death. Um, but if you control the state and the courts like that, you can slowly erode the degree to which a society is a free society. Um, but as some political scientists have shown, most people most of the time are primarily concerned with, you know, are my kids safe? Are they getting an education?
Do I have a paycheck? Am I, uh, you know, am I at risk of a pandemic? And, um, and so the kinds of things that you or I might be concerned about in terms of civil liberties are, are often not most people’s primary concerns. And that means that even semi authoritarian or. [01:01:00] You know, kind of weak democracies can be comfortable places to live and you know, it’s, it’s obviously, uh, not so fun if your kid is pulled out of his bed at night by, uh, you know, military or, you know, vigilantes.
But that’s rare enough that a lot of people make do. That’s I think, I think the, the more realistic kind of fear about what could happen in the United States is that it’s the vulnerable people. Yeah. We just, the sort of erosion democratic erosion over time and that that poses, uh, uh, a larger threat. But it doesn’t, we don’t, we don’t just converge to Nazi Germany.
It’s more a bunch of things we think of as sacrosanct. Mm-hmm.
Zach: Become
Omar: less
Zach: so. Yeah. Which I think is. Already happened and I think will continue to happen if Trump is reelected. Yeah. You had written a piece a couple months ago where you said that initially you thought the George Floyd responses, um, post George Floyd responses resembled more of the late sixties civil rights protests that were more aggressive and, and violent in the wake [01:02:00] of MLK being assassinated.
You know, a little bit later you said that the protest, the George Floyd protest turned into more something like the, the early sixties civil rights protests that were more peaceful and more effective. And so you seem to be pretty optimistic in the sense that you, you saw a lot of positive things happening, a lot of positive changes happening, and I’m, and I’m wondering, do you still feel as optimistic as, as when you wrote that piece?
Omar: So I think it’s helpful. It’s a good question. I think it’s helpful to think about, you know, what is a violent event, right? And what is a nonviolent protest? And, and often these things are very complicated. You know, there might be, I. Thousands of people out on the street and some broken windows or a car lit on fire.
And if, you know, if, if 2% of the people engage in violence, is it a violent event? Is it a peaceful event? And so in the initial period, there were lots of peaceful protestors and some protest initiated violence. And the news media was very focused as it often is on, on the kinda more dramatic, violent episodes.
Um. But very quickly, the events became [01:03:00] overwhelmingly peaceful. And so there was one study that, uh, looked at, um, again, approximately 10,000 events in the US and found that 93% of them were totally peaceful. 7% have some protester initiated violence at a very small number, have anything really significant.
So if we think about. Thousands of events and, uh, really just a handful that stand out in our mind as having protestor violence like Minneapolis or Portland. Um, and again, in cases where there’s also significant state repression as part of that escalation, it, I think has been consistent with my kind of reading, um, a couple months ago, which is that overwhelmingly these events have been peaceful overwhelmingly.
That’s how the public understands them. And that means that these are seen in these kind of two competing narratives more as a claim for rights and less as a kind of, uh, you know, an issue of crime. And clearly, uh, the president has gone to great lengths to try and highlight the. [01:04:00] Protests in criminal terms, um, but in the context of a recession, in the context of a pandemic, you know, also importantly, uh, in a context where he is often somebody perceived not as a source of calm, but as a source of chaos himself, it doesn’t seem to have moved the public.
To his side. And so I think that does suggest that this looks more like 1964, a sympathetic movement, um, and a candidate in the case of, um, uh, I’m forgetting now, uh, who runs on, uh, on Law and Order 1964, uh, referenced him earlier. Um, Goldwater. Yeah, thank you. That it’s not, you know, we, people don’t trust Trump as a source of calm and that’s, that’s hurting him.
Two other just quick things around kinda how this is playing out in the election. Um, one is the country is so polarized and people basically, I mean, you know, we’ve had the Trump chae for almost four years now, and actually if you count the campaign more than four years, [01:05:00] and people are just, you know, they’ve made up their minds.
There’s just not a lot of people who are undecided about. Donald Trump. So new information, you know, an event where there’s violence in Portland just doesn’t move the needle that much because people already have a pretty strong impression of Donald Trump, and that makes it much harder for him to kind of try and mobilize a new thread or a new issue because it’s just, you know, about half the country is done with him and, uh, about 40% loves him.
So there’s still some people in the middle, but, but, but you, it’s hard to win an election if half the country is, uh, is, is already, um, you know, kind of fed up. And so that, that I think is another really big factor, is this combination of partisanship and people having already made up their minds about Trump.
And so protests matter, but in some ways they matter more for people sort of saying, well, okay, yeah, I, I care about racial injustice, or, I don’t, and that’s gonna influence my vote. Um, but the people who are really concerned about law and order were largely in his camp already. So it doesn’t [01:06:00] just doesn’t seem to be moving people in the way that it did in the sixties.
Zach: Yeah, I mean, I hope you’re right. I, I, I, I’m in pro-Trump groups and I’m on the pro-Trump or the Trump email list, and they have played it, use this stuff so much. And I, I kind of wonder, you know, I’m, I’m, I’m worried that these things affect more, you know, some middle of the road people, more than, you know, a lot of people might think.
Omar: Yeah, I think that’s right. I mean, I, I got an email at one point when, um, there was a wave, this is very early on, where there was some supermarkets set on fire. And a young man said, you know, my, my sister works at a supermarket and I worry about her, but I also am concerned about police violence. And, you know, what, what do you recommend?
And that’s somebody who’s, you know, cross pressured, right? Thinking about rights and thinking about the threat of, uh, crime. That is somebody who might go either way. If, if, if Trump’s promise of, uh, law and order is compelling. But that’s, I mean, I think part of what’s been interesting is that Biden in some ways seems to be the [01:07:00] candidate who’s winning on being the candidate of Order more than Trump.
And so in a weird kind of way, it’s almost an inver, it’s a, it’s the reverse of the 1968 case. Yeah. And, and where the Democrat is perceived as the, as the more credible provider of order that could change. And I think you’re right that, that there are absolutely. Some voters who move and, and if there were a particularly high profile event, you know, a week before the election that would have, you know, there, you know, you could, this is gonna be election, that could be decided as it was in 2016 on a, uh, you know, one or two percentage points.
And so that can tip an election, particularly if it’s, you know, in, uh, a critical swing state, uh, in the electoral college. So it clearly is contingent and, and things can move, but the general pattern has been that this has been an incredibly stable race, even as all sorts of things have happened.
Zach: Well, I will try to remain optimistic.
Dr. Wasow, it’s [01:08:00] been great talking to you. Thanks for coming on. Is there anything you wanna mention about work that you’re working on now or, uh, ways to contact you?
Omar: I just wanna thank you, Zach, for having me and, uh, and you know, if anybody wants to follow me on Twitter, I’m at at O-W-A-S-O-W Owosso on, uh, Twitter.
And, uh, yeah, grateful for the opportunity to have this conversation. I
Zach: hope you enjoyed this talk. You can read more about the people who Read People podcast at Reading Poker tells video if you enjoyed this episode. Much appreciated. If you leave me a rating or a review on the platform you listen on if possible.
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