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Why ‘Defund the police’ works as a slogan It makes rational sense for activists to employ the most extreme maxims, even if they don't believe them

A street in Washington near what is now called "Black Lives Matter Plaza". Photo: Tasos Katopodis/Getty Images

A street in Washington near what is now called "Black Lives Matter Plaza". Photo: Tasos Katopodis/Getty Images


November 20, 2020   6 mins

It is entirely possible that Congressman Jim Clyburn is the reason Joe Biden is now America’s President-Elect. As Biden’s primary campaign was struggling after terrible showings in Iowa and New Hampshire, Clyburn endorsed Biden for the South Carolina contest, which he went on to win — changing the course of the presidential race, and of history.

As House majority whip, Clyburn is also the most senior African-American man in Congress. But appearing on Meet the Press recently, he spoke out against an unusual target — the slogan chanted by many Democrat and Black Lives Matter activists: “Defund the police”.

The chant had cost Democrats victories in multiple winnable races, he claimed, and had been a source of concern for him and his long-time ally, the civil rights leader Rep. John Lewis, who died this summer. Both of them, he added, had seen the harm that the “burn baby, burn” slogan did to the civil rights movements of the 1960s.

And yet it’s happening again, and it’s not just one slogan. “Defund the police” is joined by catchphrases like “All cops are bastards” or “Kill all TERFs” on the activist Left. All of them worry political leaders, draw fearsome attacks from political opponents, and test horribly with the public.

So why have they become the shibboleths of 2020 — the phrases that must be said to show you’re on the right side of history, or at least the right side of the fight? It’s certainly not because most people using the slogans mean them literally, or at least that’s what most people who use them say.

“Defund the police” is a shorthand for a movement to transfer budgets for services such as mental health, homelessness and community support away from often hugely bloated and militarised US police forces.

“All cops are bastards” is not, you’ll be told, to be taken literally, but is instead a shorthand to symbolise that under current models of policing it is impossible for good officers to make a difference.

“’Kill all TERFs’,” as one Twitter proponent explained it, “is just a meme and doesn’t wish death upon anyone … it’s about wanting systemic change and how to say that in the most attention grabbing, shortest way possible.”

The downside for these activists apparently set on securing major social change is that this is not what either political opponents or typical voters take the slogans to mean.

In the case of “Defund the police”, Reuters/Ipsos polling found just 33% of registered voters supported the slogan, while 63% opposed it. When presented with the policy package apparently represented by the slogan, 68% supported the reforms and just 30% opposed them. The US public is apparently on board with police reform — they just hate the way it’s being proposed to them.

So what makes otherwise successful and energetic activist campaigns burden themselves with slogans that only harm their cause? There are several potential answers, the simplest being that campaigners may simply be lying when they say they don’t mean their slogan’s literal meaning. By claiming this, they can attempt to get away with threats of violence in public discourse — potentially taunting or intimidating those they oppose while retaining a degree of respectability.

Another explanation is that these kind of slogans are designed to keep fragmenting activist movements united. Some people do literally mean “defund the police” when they say it, just as some mean “all cops are bastards”. If your broader movement repurposes that slogan, you can hold it together for so long as some supporters think they’re being literal and others are equally sure that they are not, and both groups are sincere in that belief.

But there is another, deeper explanation at play: that is, what if the political unpopularity of this type of slogan is the exact reason it’s used? While there is a sudden upswing of support behind BLM, trans rights or some similar movement, they will find no shortage of politicians willing to say supportive words.

Experience has taught these movements not to expect that support to hang around when the polling moves or when issues move on. How then are they to separate true political allies — perhaps, for example, among candidates for Congress — from fairweather friends? And so an unpopular slogan becomes a useful form of signalling.

The concept of signalling is one that emerged from economic theory, because economists concluded that we are often trying to make decisions with imperfect information. We might want to separate high-quality and low-quality candidates for a job, or a good second-hand car from a lemon. We cannot just take it on someone’s word that they’re a high-quality candidate because, as the mantra goes, “talk is cheap”: it’s in the interest of every candidate, good or not, to claim that they are high quality.

Signalling works because it comes with a cost. A typical thought-experiment example used for signalling — and taught in universities — is higher education itself, albeit in a very cynical way.

For the purposes of the example, imagine that degrees add absolutely no value or experience to a candidate, and that any type of candidate could get a degree if they really wanted to. We can even imagine that they come with no direct financial cost.

In this example, a degree requires a candidate to give up three years of their life and produce a large volume of academic work over that time. That work is less unpleasant for high-quality candidates than for low-quality candidates, even though both could do it. The cost of a signalling degree, in other words, would be lower for a high-quality candidate than a low-quality candidate.

This would mean that an employer in this imaginary world could expect that the chances of getting a high-quality candidate would be higher if they picked a candidate with a degree than if they picked one without — even knowing the degree is worthless, it still serves as a signal.

This, of course, is not at all how degrees work in the real world, nothing like it.

But the idea of costly signals is a useful one, and one that extends well beyond politics, economics or even humanity — costly displays with no practical value are built into our very biology. Elaborate plumage, fights between males, or energetic mating dances are all forms of signalling — a proxy for some kind of health, by demonstrating you can afford to do something costly.

What the would-be mate wants to know is whether their offspring would be healthy and have good genes and a good chance of viability. What activist movements want to know is whether elite supporters will really follow through on their goals, or whether they’ll just try to ride a popular wave and then sell them out.

Politicians are generally looking to win elections and secure their policy goals. Forcing a politician to tie themselves to a cause that is unpopular could become an effective signal: if they are willing to pay that price, it suggests — on paper at least — that your policy goals must be like theirs.

That means your movement’s useful resources — its activists, its fundraising potential, its votes — are targeted towards candidates who might actually help you in office, rather than ones who will just say the right thing. If effective, this could lead to the counter-intuitive conclusion that unpopular slogans could be effective vehicles for creating social change. The open question is whether they are actually effective in separating politicians in the way such a movement might want.

Moderate politicians would argue that the signalling cost of backing unpopular causes is effectively zero to a certain type of politician — one with a safe seat who enjoys supporting niche causes but who has little interest or ability in actually legislating or governing. If this critique — one levelled at Jeremy Corbyn or Bernie Sanders — is fair, such politicians find it easy to support such movements, but then achieve very little in the way of change for them.

But the politicians deterred from paying the signalling price might be the ones more able to actually mobilise a broader coalition to effect change — if only they could win enough trust to do so. Yet this risks falling into the “talk is cheap” trap. How does this moderate prove themselves different from all the others that went before, and got nothing done?

Activist movements are more rational than they can first appear. There are good reasons to demand a political price in exchange for your support. The question for the movements today trying to succeed where their predecessors failed is whether the price they’re demanding is too high for the people they most need to pay up.

This is further hampered by another social psychological effect known as group polarisation. If you take a group who are loosely aligned on a particular issue and have them discuss it over time — as will naturally happen in any political or activist group — academic studies show they will not come to a consensus around the average politics of the group before they started talking.

Instead, they will come to a conclusion towards the extreme end of the view — in effect radicalising each other through their mutual agreement. This is mooted to be due to a combination of effects all acting in the same direction: firstly, confirmation bias, with people latching on to new information that supports their existing beliefs.

Similarly, people will recognise that status and acceptance comes from expressing more extreme views. Especially with issues that stir passions, people will rarely critically reflect and test their positions in such stirring circumstances.

This combination of group dynamics, a need for cohesion, and the desire to create meaningful costly signals creates a circumstance in which activist groups create slogans which then baffle and alienate the elites on “their” side and the public alike. The cost of signalling can be high, but it ends up being suffered by the group as a whole.


James Ball is the global editor of the Bureau of Investigative Journalism. His latest book is “The System: Who Owns The Internet And How It Owns Us”.

jamesrbuk

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Alex Mitchell
Alex Mitchell
4 years ago

“Kill all TERFs’,” as one Twitter proponent explained it, “is just a meme and doesn’t wish death upon anyone”
And yet this is said by the “words are violence” types. As noted by many elsewhere, a healthy dose of dissonance is required to be suitably progressive. In that sort of environment, trying to explain why someone says anything is kind of pointless. Good effort, though.

Paul Rogers
Paul Rogers
4 years ago
Reply to  Alex Mitchell

“healthy dose of dissonance is required to be suitably progressive”
Yes, except that working with teams that don’t agree is normal in most functioning teams, anywhere. Indeed it’s a good thing.

What the worst progressives are is simply two faced twats, speaking from both sides of the mouth. That’s a whole different level of broken moral compass.

The boy who cried wolf was ostracised and died, lest anyone forget….

Stephen Crossley
Stephen Crossley
4 years ago
Reply to  Alex Mitchell

Most three word slogan movements have the same purpose, namely to bring down the democratically elected, usually capitalist governments found in virtually all developed countries and replace them with an unspecified but utopian future run by, you guessed it, the activists.

The activists/anarchists know that the people will never vote for this so they hide their real agendas behind the slogan, usually one designed to chime with the concern-du-jour of the current student body.

For their next foray may I humble suggest:

“Acne is genocide!”

Ian Barton
Ian Barton
4 years ago

I’m not sure whether the 3 word approach worked well for the “People’s Front of Judea” …

… or was that the “Judean Peoples Front” …. I forget which.

Caroline Galwey
Caroline Galwey
4 years ago

Oh okay, so ‘kill all ….’ is only ‘hate speech’ if right wing rednecks do it, from college-educated lefties it’s just a harmless, attention-catching slogan. Good to have that spelled out.

croftyass
croftyass
4 years ago

Indeed-maybe we should enshrine it in law so everyone’s clear.

Mike SampleName
Mike SampleName
4 years ago

“I’m not sure if that’s true” and “I don’t agree” is hate speech from anyone other than the “college-educated lefties”.

Andrew Best
Andrew Best
4 years ago

Words have meanings.
Defund the police means exactly that.
Acab means exactly that.
Kill all terfs means exactly that.
Just like the left in this country saying all Tories are scum,
You say it you mean it and that is why the left have become the most nasty, bigoted people you will meet.
So good luck with your word gymnastics, people are not fooled by your mealy mouthed explanations.
Defund the police means exactly that

Nancy Strunk
Nancy Strunk
4 years ago
Reply to  Andrew Best

Ya, it means let criminals do what they want, if they rape and kill a baby (,like just happened) oh well so sad, there’s no police. Who ever thinks this is right. I pray your loved one is never involved in a violent crime. You are literally condoning murder, rape, child molestation, abuse. Do you want innocent let to die? Are you really that evil? Police defunding takes away from education and training. How about reworking the budgets to make these top priorities? No jail, just fines for marijuana, unless selling. Major drugs, violence, murder, rape no bail, speedy trials, and lengthy sentences. Punish those that need it. Are you gonna send a serial killer/rapist back out with no bail? If someone is sentenced to death , 2 appeals and done. Not taxpayers to pay for appeal after appeal for 20-30 appeals. Not being allowed to be pulled over for taillights or just a “hey know your tail lights out, have a nice day sir”, no fishing allowed. Reform not defunding, education and training is the answer not no police.

Fraser Bailey
Fraser Bailey
4 years ago

Whatever…it’s just the Left wreaking its eternal and inevitable societal and economic damage. That is what they exist to do, with the support of all their friends in the media.

jonathan.simon2020
jonathan.simon2020
4 years ago

Words do have generally accepted meanings.If you say something like ‘Kill all TERFS’ it is reasonable to believe that you mean what you say. At present, we do live in an Alice in Wonderland where we mean what we say and we are the only one to know what we mean.

Alex Lekas
Alex Lekas
4 years ago

yes, apparently taking people at their word or pointedly questioning their word is tantamount to wrong-think. Keep in mind, too, that the people who use such slogans are the same people accusing everyone else of being a “fascist.”

Vivek Rajkhowa
Vivek Rajkhowa
4 years ago

“In this example, a degree requires a candidate to give up three years of their life and produce a large volume of academic work over that time. That work is less unpleasant for high-quality candidates than for low-quality candidates, even though both could do it. The cost of a signalling degree, in other words, would be lower for a high-quality candidate than a low-quality candidate.

This would mean that an employer in this imaginary world could expect that the chances of getting a high-quality candidate would be higher if they picked a candidate with a degree than if they picked one without ” even knowing the degree is worthless, it still serves as a signal.

This, of course, is not at all how degrees work in the real world, nothing like it.”

The man was spot on until the last sentence. It is indeed how the real world works.

Nancy Strunk
Nancy Strunk
4 years ago
Reply to  Vivek Rajkhowa

Your gonna be free degree just means you want a hand out not that you want to work.

Vivek Rajkhowa
Vivek Rajkhowa
4 years ago
Reply to  Nancy Strunk

Come again?

Brian Villanueva
Brian Villanueva
4 years ago

Conservatives could learn a great deal from this strategy. We have a habit of accepting politicians public weaseliness if we have their private assurance that they really are… fill in the blank: pro-life, pro-family, pro-flat-tax, pro-free-trade, etc…. Then we wonder why they won’t govern as conservatives once we’ve elected them.

Nancy Strunk
Nancy Strunk
4 years ago

Your talking biden and God help us all harris/ pelosi. Conservatives value hard work, personal responsibility, and personal rights and freedoms. America does not mandate that anyone is entitled to a FREE SECONDARY EDUCATION. Not every kids should or could go to college. If you fail year after year when does the expense to taxpayers end? We all paid for our education, if you want college you’ll work for it. Why isn’t the NFL forced to pay anyone who wants to play football millions even if they suck? Fair for goose fair for gander. We have to pay for college kids to fail they can pay millions to any wanna be football player.

Mike Boosh
Mike Boosh
4 years ago

I think the author is overthinking this, and got it right with the simplest explanation at the start of the article: “campaigners may simply be lying when they say they don’t mean their slogan’s literal meaning.”

Nick Whitehouse
Nick Whitehouse
4 years ago

I think that the reasons the slogans are used is because the people who start them believe in them.
Thy are successful because the media love a headline – the more scary the better. The logic behind the headline is rarely discussed.
I postulate there are two main reasons behind this.
The first is “click bait”, obvious really – the writer wants to be paid and to keep being paid.
The second reason is more complicated, but probably explained by the fact that it is easier to write an emotional piece than logically think a policy through.

Adrian Smith
Adrian Smith
4 years ago

Someone mistakenly says something like “coloured people” instead of “people of colour” and even though they apologise profusely they are driven out of their job and have their lives ruined by the same sort of people who use offensive and vicious slogans they justify by claiming they are not really meant literally.

Defund university professors who spread this crap.
All woke thought police are bastards
Kill all BLM activists

It’s ok, I DO mean it literally.

Mark Corby
Mark Corby
4 years ago
Reply to  Adrian Smith

Welcome aboard!

Alex Lekas
Alex Lekas
4 years ago

When entire groups are tarred in the most vulgar way – be they so-called TERFs or random cops – that’s not very persuasive. In fact, it is reminiscent of the type of regimes the sloganeers claim to oppose. Well, they have a funny way of showing it. Demonizing a group is not productive; we’ve seen attacks on cops from people who evidently didn’t get the memo that “it’s just a slogan.” We’ve seen the attacks on women saying such radical things as “only females can get pregnant,” by more people who missed that memo the author believes exists.

Minneapolis, among other cities, is learning first-hand just how stupid and destructive the “defund” comment is, and elected officials like AOC are ready to explain to you how defund means just that – not a reduction or a reallocation of funds, but an elimination. I wonder how much this idiotic attitude has contributed to the ongoing exodus from New York City.

Nancy Strunk
Nancy Strunk
4 years ago
Reply to  Alex Lekas

That’s why omar had to cheat to win. The principals were standing on the streets watching their kids after a SENIOR, who would have GRADUATED THIS YEAR WAS KILLED FOR GOING TO SCHOOL. SHE SHOULD BE HELD PERSONALLY RESPONSIBLE FIR THIS KIDS DEATH. HER AND HER “KGB SQUAD”.

Gary Cole
Gary Cole
4 years ago

Sophie Duker: “…when we say we want to kill whitey, we don’t really mean we want to kill whitey”.

The comedian then quipped “we do…”

brianlyn
brianlyn
4 years ago

The old-fashioned ‘Reds Under The Bed’ charge might be revived in this case. ‘Defund the Police’ and ‘All Copes are Enemies of the Working Class’ are videos generated by Rebel TV in the USA (Rebel Telly in Ireland). The ‘useful idiots’ involved are Trotskyite, most of whom would be horrified to think that maybe the cash comes from Putin and is designed to drive voters into the arms of Donald Trump. Surely not!

Andrew Russell
Andrew Russell
4 years ago

I’d move to Russia if I didn’t live there already.

Christopher Chantrill
Christopher Chantrill
4 years ago

My line is that “activism” is very like the good old medieval romances when knights were bold and rescuing maidens in distress.

The medieval romances were written AFTER all the knights had become courtiers.

“Activism” occurs AFTER the revolutions are over. In other words after “revolution” has become “Revolution Baby!”

Will D. Mann
Will D. Mann
4 years ago

In this instance the slogan appears to have cost the Democrats a majority in the Senate and probably the House of representatives, thus ensuring that the policy will not be implemented.

Maybe the campaign can start again at State level so individual police forces will be able to experiment with transfering resources to drug rehabilitation and mental health services. If this is seen to work it could be copied elsewhere and spread across the country.

Peter LastSpurrier
Peter LastSpurrier
4 years ago

‘status and acceptance comes from expressing more extreme views.’

I think this is nearer the mark. On either side of any argument, there are groups, within which, you get approval by expressing your solidarity with that side and your opposition to the other one. This encourages people to take relatively extreme positions. That would be my guess.

hijiki7777
hijiki7777
4 years ago

Honestly, hardly anyone uses these slogans. You always get a fringe in any political movement that goes to extremes.

JK FULLER
JK FULLER
4 years ago

I disagree. The idea is Not to Defund the Police but to more logically Redistribute the funds in a more positive helpful way!

Drahcir Nevarc
Drahcir Nevarc
4 years ago
Reply to  JK FULLER

Nonsense. It’s entirely of a piece with the tantrum left’s standard tactics of violence and intimidation.

Fraser Bailey
Fraser Bailey
4 years ago
Reply to  JK FULLER

Tell that to the families of the many who have already died in various US cities because the police have been defunded this year. Even in relatively civilised Austin, homicides are up 40% this year. And in reality, given that the defunding presumably took place in the summer, the adjusted increase post-defunding is probably closer to 80%.

Mike Boosh
Mike Boosh
4 years ago
Reply to  JK FULLER

Nonsense. It’s just a slightly more acceptable way of saying “f*ck the police”, which is what they really mean.