These are my notes and quotes from Mediation and the Evolution of Democracy by Ken Cloke. The essay is an adapted chapter from Ken’s Book Mediation in a Time of Crisis. I wrote my key takeaways from this essay for the subscribers of my Future of Conflict series.

Quotes from Mediation and the Evolution of Democracy

Ken starts the essay by noting:

Mediation-style approaches usually work
However, it’s harder when people lie, are aggressive, or act like fascists

By fascistic behavior, he means:

being committed to hostile, win/lose contests against enemies who have been pre-defined as sub-human, unworthy of respect, and legitimate to brutalize or kill.

His two main questions are then:

How and why lying, demagogic, adversarial, and fascistic behaviors arise in political conflicts and hat we can do to minimize them?

Why do these behaviors arise?

Plato:

Dictatorship naturally arises out of democracy, and the most aggravated form of tyranny and slavery out of the most extreme liberty.

Why?

For Ken, it is because electoral democracies are:

rights-based, competitive, adversarial, zero sum games in which vast amounts of status, wealth, and power are won or lost based on win/lose public contests for political office.

The stakes are so high! So it just takes somebody “sufficiently corrupt or ruthless” to lie about things.

Plato, again:

Democracy, by permitting freedom of speech, opens the door for a demagogue to exploit the people’s need for a strongman; the strongman will use this freedom to prey on the people’s resentments and fears. Once the strongman seizes power, he will end democracy, replacing it with tyranny….

So it’s a combination of the free speech we love with the zero-sum nature of the game and the incredible amount of power/spoils at stake. Which is why it’s better to seek fundamental change on the local level, where there is less at stake.

A rights-based approach like democracy is vulnerable because it:

Depends ultimately, and from time to time entirely, on the willingness of elected and appointed officials to create fair laws, follow them, neutrally enforce them, and risk their lives and careers by being willing to stand up for them.

And in times of crisis, they are required to do so against the wishes of people with far greater status, wealth, and power; people who are determined to resort to lying, bullying, bribery, coercion, contempt, and a variety of legal and illegal means, including violence, to retain them.

That is obviously very hard to do. And this is a natural consequence of the zero-sum nature of electoral politics.

He pushes harder and says that a large crisis in a democracy

Automatically generates desperate attempts to circumvent the rules so as not to lose — both by those at the top and those at the bottom, as each recognizes that elections tend to favor the people and policies that occupy the middle.

Motivated parties are sometimes willing to sacrifice democracy entirely, but usually it’s just easier “to skew the electoral system by design” to favor themselves. This tends to be done by the “dominant, wealthy, and powerful” because:

they have the means,
they have something at stake (their power), and
they know their interests will not be preserved by majority rule.

(By definition, they are not in the majority)

Some common techniques they use:

Restricting the franchise to specific groups—such as citizens, property owners, non-slaves, males, adults, or those who are literate.

Raising the cost of running for office so that only the wealthy can afford to campaign.

Cutting restrictions on campaign contributions by corporations and wealthy donors, giving them disproportionate influence.

Establishing “winner-take-all” elections that disproportionately reward large, coalition-based parties and centrist candidates, leading to political “duopolies” that rotate in power.

Sidelining small independent parties and candidates through ballot access laws, media exclusion, and limited funding.

Allowing incumbents to revise electoral rules to favor their own reelection.

Gerrymandering districts to ensure majority support for the ruling party

Disabling or defunding the postal service—such as removing mailboxes, deactivating mail sorting machines, and reducing staff—to obstruct mail-in voting.

Manipulating the census count to shift political representation toward [areas that support them]

Closing polling places in neighborhoods likely to support opposition candidates.

Creating obstacles to voting—such as poll taxes, literacy tests, strict voter ID laws, restrictions on mail-in ballots, and limited voting hours—to selectively discourage turnout among likely opposition voters.

There is a whole other approach to dismantling democracy which involves changing the discourse to be about “ego, personality, charisma, fame, seductiveness, slickness, and charm”.

Together, these methods convert the state and the entire political process into a spectacle—a charade, a televised reality show, an extension of personal power. They contribute to the creation of an apolitical, media-dominated culture that sidelines citizens, provokes controversy, and routinely ignores, trivializes, or sensationalizes repeated incidents of phoniness, amorality, addictive behavior, pretense, deception, disgrace, cover-ups, lies, and scandals committed by its leaders.

(cf The Society of the Spectacle)

So the root problem is the win/lose nature of electoral politics.

Once any process has been defined in win/lose terms, if the stakes are high enough, the rest happens somewhat automatically

The zero-sum nature of the game leads to their being a single right answer (mine) and a single wrong answer (everybody else):

If there is a single truth, a single correct path forward, a single solution to any problem and it is exclusively mine, the only remaining question is: what am I willing to do to suppress those who favor an opposing truth, path, or solution, in order to dominate the process and control the outcome?

Conclusion:

The use of power over and against others is thus an inescapable consequence of zero sum assumptions, as the “arrow” of power always tends to favor selfishness and private accumulation over sharing and social distribution in times of conflict and crisis.

Yet in order to amass power, it first must be given, ceded, conned, or taken from others. This makes lying, demagogic, and fascistic behaviors, with their aggressive, bullying attitudes toward enemies, competitors, and “outsiders,” essential elements in the “primitive accumulation” of power.

Nascent fascism needs an alliance of different abilities, because they still need to get elected!

Powerful tripartite alliances are occasionally formed between small coteries of wealthy elites who believe they will lose status, wealth, and power through the ordinary operations of democracy; large groups of angry, frightened voters who feel excluded, shut out, or bypassed by rights-based majority rule electoral outcomes; and “natural” demagogues and tyrants who use imagined conspiracies, bullying, lies, threats, and appeals to violence to unite them, turning those at the bottom of society into private armies.

Ultimately, the move to fascism best serves the interests of the wealthy elites, but they can’t do it alone, because they are just a minority. They need to ally with people who are naturally in opposition to the dominant democratic regime(s), because they are losing in some way from the rights-based approaches. But since the wealthy and the frightened don’t have the same interests, they need a demagogue to catalyze/motivate the frightened to act.

The natural next question is, why would the techniques of the demagogue be so appealing to the frightened, aside from the obvious answer that they have some Major Needs that are Unmet.

What Makes Lying Appealing?

Ken asks this question in the form of: “What makes lying appealing?

Hannah Arendt described fascism as a temporary alliance between an elite and a mob, yet it is one that crucially relies on demagogues to transform the fear of loss by both into a battle against inclusion, truth, and democracy.

People don’t mind (and even like) lying when they view the system as flawed or illegitimate. If the system is a lie, then lying about the lying could be the truth.

The typical mainstream response is to Reassert the truth, which usually fails, because the lying was never about the truth. They’re missing the point.

Lying is partly intended to encourage irrationality, in preparation for the suppression of empathy and inclusion, and the instigation of violence against enemies both within and without.

More importantly, it serves also as an unambiguous test of personal loyalty and blind obedience, as only those who are unquestioningly loyal and obedient will assert a falsehood simply because the Leader said it.

So the lying has two important roles:

Preparing people for further adventures in irrationality, like political insults, stereotypes, and slurs
As a loyalty test.

Here is Ken’s lists of the Bad Results of this kind of behavior. Importantly, these results are a mix of impacts on the victims of the lying and oppression and on the perpetrators.

Ken, like Gandhi, views anybody involved in oppression as a victim, regardless of which side they’re on.

The accepted use of political insults, stereotypes, and slurs creates a cascade of additional unwelcome consequences, including:

Compression and oversimplification of complex truths.

Use of stereotypes and biases that exaggerate or obscure what is true or useful in others’ views, diminishing the capacity for cooperation.

Permission to disengage from empathy and listening, leading to the demonization and ostracization of minorities and dissenters.

Legitimization and normalization of dishonest, cruel, bullying, patriarchal, and power-based forms of political discourse.

Suppression of dialogue and reasoned debate, replaced by acceptance of personal attacks, slander, and innuendo when they serve a political agenda.

Relief from personal responsibility for actions or inactions that may have contributed to the problem.

Increased apathy, cynicism, and distrust of anything collaborative or mediative that might help resolve differences.

Heightened willingness to accept or condone violence against targeted groups.

Loss of relationships, intimacy, and empathy, along with the erosion of caring and collaborative problem-solving.

Emotional and psychological exhaustion from the energy required to remain in conflict, suppress truth, and live divided lives.

Inability to evolve and adapt in response to changing social, political, or environmental conditions.

Loss of hope that meaningful change is possible.

Lying, Demagoguery, and Fascism – What’s the Difference?

While demagogues may manipulate the truth, they still pay lip service to it.

For fascists … there is a “radical instrumentalization of the truth,” in which the sole criteria becomes the usefulness of the statement in achieving one’s goal.

Arendt:

It was always a too little noted hallmark of fascist propaganda that it was not satisfied with lying but deliberately proposed to transform its lies into reality.

So we start with the lie that Jews are homeless beggars and parasites. Then we pass a bunch of laws and force the German Jews across the border like a pack of beggars. Then we say, “See! They are beggars and parasites!”

Know where you are in the transition:

It is important, however, to distinguish the transition from rights-based electoral democracies (lying) —with their “customary” forms of political dishonesty from demagoguery, with its hostility to the truth and “legal” means of constricting democracy from fascism, with its openly illegal, violent, and dictatorial practices, and elimination of democracy.

How does the shift to fascism happen?

Here, based on historical experience, are some of the initial steps:

Reduce complex issues to simplistic, adversarial solutions.

Engage in provocative, sensational acts that focus attention on the leader, who will then be feared and unquestioningly obeyed.

Use language that horrifies, shocks, fascinates, distorts, obscures, and draws public attention from the sleight of hand, bait-and-switch, shell game that accrues power through theatre.

Make openly false statements that make it easy to tell who is loyal and who is not.

Instead of responding to accusations of falsehood, move on to fresh lies in a never-ending cycle.

Transform shame into pride, patriotism into nationalism, religion into dogma, race into superiority, and gender into rigid roles and regimentation.

Insult, shame, and humiliate women who are leaders of the opposition.

Encourage acts of violence, directed first against the left, then against liberals, and punish those who do not remain silent or are not complicit in their response.

Manipulate efforts to bring about peace or mediate differences, reject dialogue, and lie about intentions in order to gain advantage over and defeat the other side.

What can we do to minimize fascistic behaviors?

It is important to recognize that democracy, in both its personal and political forms, is a prerequisite for positive, meaningful change—for dialogue and joint problem solving, and for mediation itself. We therefore want to consider how we might redesign the way we approach and respond to political conflicts, starting with the relationship between democracy and conflicts regarding race and caste, gender and patriarchy, wealth and class.

This is because the way these conflicts have been handled — in a zero-sum way — have led to of disaffected sentiment that led to the alliance necessary for fascism.

If you don’t have a lot of unhappy people who feel they have lost, it’s less cost-effectivity for the wealthy minority to take power.

I didn’t find a ton of relevant, practical advice in the essay on minimizing these behaviors once they’ve begun. So I asked Ken and got this response:

What we can do is have the courage to say no, hope that the courts will not cave in, and continue trying to show how collaboration produces better outcomes, how empathy is more satisfying than hatred, etc. Yes, the organizing and dialogue have to start locally and in areas that are not a high priority to force into submission… but if they are successful in silencing the legislature and the courts, there is no real safety for anyone.

Yeah, not super promising. Let’s go back to the theory.

The Role of the State in Conflict Resolution?

What is the role of the state in conflict resolution? There are generally 3 options:

Enforce the domination
Hollow procedural justice
Substantive reforms

Let’s take slavery as a conflict in question. The state can:

Enforce the domination and the rights of slave-owners (Roman law was based on this notion)
Claim to be “neutral” and “seek some form of evolving compromise that allows slavery to continue while recognizing limited rights among slaves” (What the US did for ~70 years)
Work to abolish slavery and evolve to “higher forms of democracy that only become possible once slavery and domination have disappeared” (What the US started around the Civil War)

He says the third option is equivalent to the state acting as a mediator in national-level conflicts:

Genuine, interest-based, substantive, participatory, direct, and collaborative forms of democracy are, by their nature, levelers—forces for equality, equity, fairness, and deeper democracy. They serve as places of potential transition to non-adversarial, non-zero-sum social, economic, political, and ecological relationships and processes.

Rather than acting as a protector of elites or a defender of domination, the state can increasingly become a mediator, facilitator, and systems designer—one whose role is to prevent chronic conflicts and crises, and to resolve them through consensus, collaboration, dialogue, and interest-based dispute resolution methods when they do occur.

Again, the non-zero-sum nature of the game — what mediation is looking to find — is critical here, or we’re back to Square 1.

This requires an internal shift from the state as “neutral” (Do whatever the fuck you guys want!) to “omnipartial” (I want everyone to win).

This does not mean agreeing with everyone factually, but rather focusing on surfacing the underlying non-zero-sum interests that make the facts seem compelling.

One reason interest-based methods like mediation and dialogue are not more widely used is because they reintroduce complexity, subtlety, and nuance into otherwise simplistic adversarial exchanges. These methods aim to tell the truth about what is happening without slipping into hostile biases or reactive judgments.

Basically: it’s hard, but worth it, if you’re interested in democracy.

The State as Mediator: Values

A key component in democracy’s ability to bring about meaningful change is its adoption and implementation of core values and principles. These values form the foundation for dialogue, collaborative negotiation, consensus building, mediation, and other forms of dispute resolution. They can and should be applied to social, economic, political, and ecological conflicts.

In my view, these values and principles include the following:

Inclusive Participation
All interested parties are included and invited to participate fully in discussing, designing, and implementing content, processes, and relationships.

Consensus-Based Decision-Making
Decisions are made by consensus wherever possible, and nothing is considered final until everyone is in agreement.

Value of Diversity and Differences
Diversity and honest differences are viewed as sources of dialogue, leading to better ideas, healthier relationships, and greater unity.

Challenging Bias and One-Sidedness
Biases, stereotypes, prejudices, assumptions of innate superiority, and ideas of intrinsic correctness are considered divisive and are discounted as one-sided descriptions of more complex, multi-sided, paradoxical realities.

Openness and Empathy in Communication
Openness, authenticity, appreciation, and empathy are regarded as better foundations for communication and decision-making than secrecy, rhetoric, insult, and demonization.

Dialogue Over Debate
Dialogue and open-ended questions are deemed more useful than debate and cross-examination.

Rejection of Coercive Methods
Force, violence, coercion, aggression, humiliation, and domination are rejected—both as methods and as outcomes.

Priority of Cooperation and Collaboration
Cooperation and collaboration are ranked as primary, while competition and aggression are considered secondary.

Recognition of Legitimate Interests
Everyone’s interests are accepted as legitimate, acknowledged, and satisfied wherever possible, consistent with others’ interests.

Prioritizing Process and Relationship
Processes and relationships are considered at least as important as content—if not more so.

Integration of Emotion and Logic
Attention is paid to emotions, subjectivity, and feelings, as well as to logic, objectivity, and facts.

Shared Responsibility for Growth
Everyone is regarded as responsible for participating in improving content, processes, and relationships, and for searching for synergies and transformations.

Invitation to Deeper Communication
People are invited into heartfelt communication and deeper awareness, and are encouraged to reach resolution, forgiveness, and reconciliation.

Addressing Systemic Sources of Conflict
Chronic conflicts are traced to their systemic sources, where they can be prevented and redesigned to discourage repetition.

Redefining Victory
Victory is regarded as obtainable by everyone and is redirected toward collaborating to solve common problems, leaving no one feeling defeated.

The problem with Ken’s work is all these damn lists. They’re so overwhelming, but there’s so much density of information there, it would be a loss to leave them out. The paradox!

The internal shift:

In order to see political conflicts differently:

We must approach political statements from both sides the way mediators often treat ordinary conflict stories: as less concerned with factual accuracy and more with emotional truth. These statements often serve as confessions or requests, disguised as accusations and insults.

We need not let our desire to connect and empathize with both sides lead us to condone what we know to be harmful or false. It is entirely possible to show that we care about people—not by agreeing with the “facts” they assert, but by redefining the problem as an “it” rather than a “you”; by asking questions that deepen their understanding of the underlying issues; and by using similar methods that invite reflection rather than defensiveness.

In summary

Electoral democracy is a zero-sum games with enormous power at stake.
Someone will be sufficiently motivated to transgress the rules
Conflicts create a ripe opportunity for an alliance between wealthy minorities and large groups of unhappy people
Lying is a great starting point to find unhappy people, organize them, and build loyalty
Demagogues encourage behavior that is bad for everybody (on all sides) and the system as a whole (which is their goal)
Fascism emerges when the demagogues have the power to turn their lies into truths
The state could have prevented this by mediating interests instead of running win-lose contests (elections)
The values to do so are mostly process-based, and involve taking everybody seriously
To practice this, we must see political arguments and conflict stories as requests or confessions in disguise.