Donald Trump’s victory in November has given rise to much soul-searching among progressives. How could a plurality of U.S. voters embrace a man who seems to relish the persecution of disfavored minorities, from transgender people to Black Americans to immigrants? As I reflect on this dangerous moment, I have come to appreciate that the identity politics of many progressives has made it easier for Trump to pursue his agenda of intolerance.
The common wisdom today holds that autocracy is ascendant, democracy in decline. The reality is more complicated. In country after country in recent years, people living under autocracy have taken to the streets, often at great risk, to demand accountable government. Turkey and Serbia are the latest examples, but we have seen similar popular uprisings from Hong Kong to Nicaragua. Ironically, it is in established democracies that the trend toward autocracy has been most pronounced.
That willingness to abandon democracy can be traced to two primary causes: the disillusionment of some people with the democratic system, and the demagoguery of autocratic politicians. The disenchantment is found in people who believe that democratic government is leaving them behind. They feel that they are stagnating economically amid growing inequality, that they are not served, heard, or even respected by governing officials. It only makes matters worse when democratic governance is paralyzed by today’s increasingly divisive politics. The answer to this politics of despair lies in part in better governance and in promoting policies that are seen to respond to, and serve, all members of society.
That is easier said than done, but it is not as if autocrats govern any better. As they undermine the checks and balances on their power, autocrats typically deliver for themselves (and their cronies) more than for the people of their country. But they avoid outrage from their supporters because they excel at covering up their self-serving policies—at changing the subject—by scapegoating disfavored minorities. The rhetoric, often couched in terms of restoring “traditional” values, varies from country to country, but the strategy is similar: A country’s problems are blamed on immigrants, Muslims, LGBTQ+ people, wokeism, feminism, or whatever excuse appeals to the conservative base and its autocratically inspired quest for the supposedly halcyon days of the past.
This is a cynical anti-rights strategy. Power is pursued by targeting for persecution the people who are often society’s most vulnerable.
The classic if reflexive response of human rights activists has been to stress that none of our rights are guaranteed unless all of our rights are secure. That was the insight of Pastor Martin Niemöller, who famously said, “First they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out, because I was not a socialist…” It is the logic behind the Kantian injunction to treat others as you would want them to treat you.
But autocratic politicians do not accept that syllogism. By portraying segments of society as threats to the community rather than members of it, autocrats seek to justify depriving them of their rights, assuming not only that mistreating these supposed outsiders will not affect the rights of people still deemed on the inside, but that this mistreatment is necessary to protect them. The autocratic response reflects the often-neglected premise of the liberal vision—that is, its dependence on a shared sense of community.
Ironically, the identity politics that has come to define much of progressive thought these days has facilitated this autocratic sleight of hand by neglecting, or even undermining, the national community. Progressives have tended to promote the rights of interest groups, particularly people who are seen to have historically suffered discrimination and persecution.
The impulse to defend the downtrodden is admirable, but the way it has been carried out comes at a cost. If progressive politics can be reduced to the promotion of a collection of disfavored interest groups, it is easier for the autocrat to carve out selected groups for demonization. Autocrats simply portray their priority interest groups as the ones that progressives are neglecting—typically, members of a country’s working-class ethnic majority—and claim that the demonized groups are the cause of the priority group’s malaise. In the United States, white working class men were especially sympathetic to Trump’s appeal, although they were far from the only ones.
An alternative approach would be for progressives to speak in terms of a national community; to stress the rights of all people who live in the nation. This would not mean ignoring the rights of the downtrodden, but it would require a different rhetoric that promotes their rights as members of a national community rather than as mere interest groups among others.
To speak of a national community does not require nationalism. The aim is not to promote an aggressive pursuit of national interests against other nations. There is no need to invade Greenland. Rather, the point is to shift the public conversation away from identity politics. Progressives would speak less about a coalition of interest groups and more about a nation of rights bearers. In the United States, they would stress that the American dream should be available to everyone in the country, that no one should be left behind.
That is not to ignore the defense of rights abroad, where concern for a common humanity is often essential. But in the domestic context, that basic empathy can and should be supplemented by a shared understanding of the national community.
Depriving autocrats of the easy target of identity politics would make it easier to challenge their scapegoating as a ploy to divert attention from how poorly they usually govern. In the United States, Trump’s attacks on immigrants or transgender people have little if anything to do with the bread-and-butter issues that motivate many of the people who feel left behind, but he has greater success with this rhetorical deceit because progressives’ focus on identity politics is so easily caricatured. Trump’s notorious campaign ad—that his opponent, Kamala Harris, was for “they/them” while Trump was for “you”—illustrated the problem.
When I led Human Rights Watch, I saw this dilemma at a global level. On the one hand, I created a series of programs devoted to people who had traditionally been neglected by the human rights movement, such as LGBTQ+ people and people with disabilities. I wanted them included. On the other hand, I bridled at the tendency of some staff members to talk about general rights issues by listing all of these disfavored groups rather than speaking simply of the rights of everyone. I erased the lists whenever I had the chance because I saw them as undermining the essential view that all people have rights by virtue simply of their humanity.
Some people do indeed face historical discrimination, and a targeted response is required. But progressives cannot allow themselves to be reduced to the defenders of a series of special interests, however disadvantaged. The best antidote to the autocratic dodge is for progressives to recapture the defense of everyone in a nation—to embrace and defend a national community of rights bearers.
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