Isolation through opposition: forms of consciousness in the underground

We usually think of a restriction on freedom of expression as the goal or the side effect of a politically responsible action.

In truth, however, it does not take a ruler to silence political opponents.

Villages and small towns, once the local stronghold of a political party, can also have a similar gag effect.

A publication by the American communication scientist Emily Van Duyn shows how this happens.

She studied a group of 136 liberal American women who met and exchanged secretly for years to process their shock at Donald Trump's election victory and to think of political remedies.

Founded in a small, clearly Republican-dominated town in rural Texas, the not without sympathy drawn secret society shows the difficulties with which people from the left of politics have to grapple in regions of this kind.

Right attitude is required in everyday life

It is part of the fate of this minority not to be able to avoid the supporters of the majority opinion, but to be dependent on them, especially in private life.

Most of the good and personal relationships of Democrats are with Republicans, to whom they deny their true political opinion out of a love of peace.

The same cautious expression that spares some right-wingers the bitter disappointment of being married to a left-winger also makes it difficult for left-wingers to see one another as possible allies.

It was only in their discussion group that the women from Texas were able to overcome this obstacle of mutual invisibility.

The women suffered above all from the fact that, even in non-political situations, communication was carried out in a way that the conservatives would only have dared to do at their own election rally when the opposition was almost equally strong: simply insinuating the right-wing basic attitude of the respective conversation partner.

Even when visiting the doctor, when dining in a restaurant or during a tour of the apartment, the women had to listen to hymns to the hated president, smiling bravely.

A strict secret

The author describes the problem with the well-known metaphor of the spiral of silence: those who cling to a political outsider position prefer to keep it to themselves than to take on the more or less closed group of their opponents, and it is precisely this reticence that makes it easier in turn to assess the size and the to overestimate the unity of that group.

In the end, the majority manages to see their own position as the only alternative and to treat contradiction as error, opposition as betrayal.

Thus, even in the midst of intact democracies, local rule can come from a single moral party.

The fact that the Republicans are predominantly dominant in rural America brings into play a form of social control that is only possible in villages and small towns: you encounter the politically inferior opponent in a variety of role relationships and can therefore, if he comes out, in harm in the broadest way.

That doesn't have to keep the Democrats from the political election, which is secret for precisely this reason;

but all public engagements involve significant risks.

The few women who ventured out on an experimental basis were punished on the spot - one complaint about disability jokes and you're shunned at church.

In addition to social isolation, which should not deter the unsociable, there is a risk of tangible economic disadvantages.

Out of justified fear of losing customers, the notably successful businesswomen of the secret society kept their opinions to themselves, and not only during sales talks, but also everywhere else, given the small size of the circumstances. Long before they founded their group, the women were therefore closed Behavioral discipline and expressive caution have been socialized, including the ability to lie.

Incidentally, the most important success of the group work concerned the local branch of the Democratic Party.

Since previously hardly anyone was willing to be publicly opposed to the local mainstream, it has languished for decades.

The few women in the group who have since resuscitated him did so as individuals and not as members of the group.

Because the existence of the group is still a secret today.

Emily Van Duyn, Democracy Lives in Darkness, Oxford University Press, Oxford 2021.