Shame is commonplace in everyday life and politics. Thomas Scheff calls shame ‘the master emotion’, though notes its discussion is often taboo in western countries. He argues that when directed towards ourselves, shame can help us alleviate anxieties through information-seeking and risk avoidance. In these circumstances, when internalised, it resembles (and possibly transforms into) guilt, encouraging sympathy, helpfulness, and attempts to correct (one’s own) bad behaviour. Shame can, however, be highly damaging if internally directed at our core-identity; our sense of who we are rather than what we do, and the source of our self-esteem. When shames turns us against ourselves, it can destroy confidence, lead to depression, create dissonance, and manifest in deviant acts; simple thrills and joys in doing anti-social or wrong things – what Jack Katz calls the ‘seductions of crime’ – that denote an inauthenticity in the way we relate to the people around us.
Trying to avoid this harmful internalisation, we often externalise our shame – blame it on someone else – particularly when that another person or group is perceived to be attacking our core identity. When this happens, shame turns into anger. This might include relatively small, nasty incidents, such as online trolling and cyber-attacks. However, it can also include mass gatherings and political channelling of shame and anger. Such events took place over ten years ago in Australia in the form of the Cronulla Riots, which as Ghassan Hage has argued was a representation of the shame and fear experienced by angry rioters who had their core identities – their conventional white masculine dominance – challenged by job loss from globalization. Hage’s analysis was more political than empirical however; he did not talk to the rioters themselves to gauge their opinions, perceptions, motivations, and – importantly – their feelings.
More recently, shame and anger have manifested in American politics with the rise of Donald Trump, and have been subject to more intense analysis. Arlie Hochschild undertook extensive fieldwork with members of the Tea Party to get a sense of their ‘deep story’ about why they were drawn to vote for Trump, and brings back a more complicated, nuanced picture. She describes their narrative: they see themselves ‘waiting patiently in line’; working hard, being good Christians, not wishing ill of others, but aspiring to lead a slowly improving better life; better than their parents, better for their kids. However – their narrative continues – they are being undermined by others who cut ahead them in the line without working for it, who are supported by the government to do so (on their tax dollars!), who turn them into strangers in their own land, and who insult them with labels like ‘racist’ and ‘sexist’ if they try to point out the injustice of it all.
They therefore turn to someone like Trump because he recognizes and taps into their feelings – of thwarted aspiration, relative decline, being ignored and unsupported, and having these feelings unrecognised and suppressed – and he seeks to overturn liberal feeling rules. She notes how Trump sets himself up as moral guardian and Judge, dividing everything into good and bad, and then judging ‘bad people’ harshly; workers (on the Apprentice), models, journalists, migrants, etc. He demands continual recognition of himself and his achievements, and this appeals to white workers who identify with him and also want to achieve and feel recognized.
I would argue that this is manifestation of multiple forms of shame – shame at their worsening condition, the feeling of being shamed by an uncaring, tax-grabbing government, and the feeling of being shamed by politically correct liberals and the government when they point out how this is unfair – and their subsequent anger is well-tapped by Trump to feed right-wing politics. The question is: what should be the response of the left? Should it take the fight to Trump, and continue to entrench the partisan divisions wedded firmly to identity politics? Should it allow itself to be painted as anti-nation (and pro-global), anti-aspirational (and pro-disadvantaged), and anti ‘straight white male’ (and pro everyone else)? Or should it seek an alternate path, looking for compromise, inclusiveness and hope … and empathy?
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