"There Is No Line"

Group Polarization, Echo Chambers, and Transgression

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My topic is political extremism and the mechanisms that generate it. We will have a look at echo chambers, norm entrepreneurs, spirals, and the thrill of transgression.

I am going to approach all this in part by exploring the trajectory (not journey!) of one person, seen through the lens of Jason Zengerle. Please bear with me; it will take a little while to get there.

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Where does extremism come from? Why do people move to extremes?

Here’s one clue: In a striking empirical regularity, deliberation tends to move groups, and the individuals who compose them, toward a more extreme point in the direction indicated by their own predeliberation judgments.

For example, people who are opposed to the minimum wage are likely, after talking to each other, to become still more opposed; people who tend to support gun control are likely, after discussion, to support gun control with considerable enthusiasm; people who believe that climate change is a serious problem are likely, after discussion, to insist on severe measures to prevent climate change.

This general phenomenon -- group polarization -- has many implications for economic, political, and legal institutions. It helps to explain extremism, "radicalization," cultural shifts, and the behavior of political parties and religious organizations. It is closely connected to current concerns about the consequences of the Internet and AI. It also helps account for feuds, ethnic antagonism, and tribalism. Group polarization bears on the conduct of government institutions, including juries, legislatures, courts, and regulatory commissions.

There are interesting relationships between group polarization and social cascades, both informational and reputational.

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Ok, that was a bit of plagiarism. It’s (mostly) the abstract of my paper, The Law of Group Polarization.

You can find a version here: https://chicagounbound.uchicago.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1541&context=law_and_economics;The

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There is a class of books, on current events, that are engaging reading, but that induce a feeling, after an hour or so, that you really need to take a shower, or find some way to calm down. The reason is that the books feel a bit like how a jackhammer sounds, if it is in use right outside your front door.

Here’s another way to put it: The books are like potato chips. They don’t stay with you. But because of that jackhammer sound, they’re worse than potato chips.

A book on Tucker Carlson might be expected to be part of this class of books. In some ways, Hated by All the Right People: Tucker Carlson and the Unraveling of the Conservative Mind, by Jason Zengerle, does not entirely defy that expectation. But it transcends the genre. It is full of detail, and well-written, and full of jaw-dropping moments. You can learn a lot from it. It really does tell you about the unraveling of something. (Note: In important respects, Zengerle seems to admire Carlson - not his current views by any means, but his intelligence and talent, and some of his early writing.)

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Part of what makes the book gripping is Carlson’s dazzling twists and turns. A few glimpses:

1. Carlson didn’t graduate from college (his grades at Trinity College were really bad), but early in his career, he was a print journalist, and a pretty good one, maybe a very good one. The man could write. In terms of politics: He had libertarian leanings; he was also a moderate conservative. He was McCain-adjacent. This is in the late 1990s and early 2000s. His aspiration might have been to become a distinguished, iconoclastic journalist.

2. Also in the early 2000s, he worked for CNN, taking the conservative side on Crossfire. He was regarded as pro-market and pro-Israel. He became interested in television. He seemed less focused on print journalism.

3. From 2005 to 2008, he worked for MSNBC, where he was a bit more populist, but in the same broadly conservative mold.

4. In 2009, he was hired by Fox News.

5. In 2010, he founded The Daily Caller. Originally he seemed to want to do serious, responsible journalism, a New York Times for the right, a kind of return to the fold for him. He delivered a famous speech in which he called for serious journalism from the right.

6. As I read Zengerle, Carlson’s period at The Daily Caller is where things started to accelerate. His aspirations for the Dally Caller shifted in short order. He saw that he could get a lot of clicks with sensational pieces, full of ridicule and rage (and also extreme views). How to put this? More traffic seemed the order of the day.

7. A line between what you can run online and what you can’t? “The story got a million views.” And: “There is no line. The line is fake. . . . The sooner you stop believing in the line, the better off you’ll be.”

8. Eventually, and on air: “The leaders of today’s Democratic Party . . . despise this country. They have said so. They continue to. That is shocking but it is also disqualifying.”

9. Also on air: “I know that the left and all the little gatekeepers on Twitter become literally hysterical if you use the term 'replacement,’ if you suggest that the Democratic Party is trying to replace the current electorate, the voters now casting ballots, with new people, more obedient voters from the Third World. But they become hysterical because that’s what’s happening, actually.”

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There’s a ton more. That’s just a quick, tiny, truncated glimpse of Zengerle’s vivid, lengthy and detailed account. So are we dealing here with group polarization? Is that Zengerle’s topic? Is that what he catalogues, with what he describes in his subtitle as “the unraveling of the conservative mind”?

In one sense, almost certainly so. Within Carlson’s audience: Zengerle describes some of what are undoubtedly a significant number of online groups in which like-minded people engage within one another.

Sometimes those people seem to radicalize one another (possibly a lot, with the help of confident, uninhibited, particularly extreme members). At the same time, Zengerle shows that Carlson is highly responsive to his audience - numbers of clicks, readers, and viewers above all. As they radicalize, so does Carlson.

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But that account is not adequate - not close.

Carlson is also a leader - a political entrepreneur and (more important) a norm entrepreneur. He alters what it is permissible to say and to think. (“The leaders of today’s Democratic Party . . . despise this country.”) As he does so, his audience is informed - and some of its members, not there yet, move further (and also move different).

That movement has, in turn, an effect on Carlson (as Zengerle also shows). He is highly attuned to what his audience likes and tolerates. So what we observe is not simply group polarization, but also a kind of spiral, or tornado, in which like-minded groups orient, legitimate, and spur the norm entrepreneur, who orients, legitimates, and spurs the like-minded groups, and so forth.

(Of course this can and does happen on the left, too.)

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This account is better, but it too is not adequate. Here is one thing that it is missing: Some of Carlson’s audience wants to be excited and thrilled, not just entertained. Some of the audience wants to see transgression.

What was exciting and thrilling yesterday - what was transgressive and bold - is a bit boring today. That means that (some) norm entrepreneurs of certain kinds have to be alert to the phenomenon of habituation, which refers to diminishing sensitivity to stimuli.

Thus the audience, on Monday, with some kind of frisson: “Could he really say that?” Or: “Could we really say that?” Or: “Could we even think that, let alone say that?” (Zengerle doesn’t quite get at this, though he depicts it.)

People get a permission slip. That’s thrilling. On Monday, at least. By Wednesday, the question is: :”What else have you got?” Better: What new “that” can induce the same kind of thrill, today. that Monday’s “that” induced on Monday?

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I speculate that this is a nontrivial part of the dynamic that helps explain political extremism and polarization in the United States in the 2020s.

Of course there are some lines that one (including Carlson) just cannot cross.

There are some fixed points - some because the audience holds them and is even defined by them (for example, I think, love of country, maybe love of certain political figures, maybe hatred of certain political figures*) - and others because much or most of the audience would ultimately be repelled or disgusted by going there (take your pick of issues**).

So it is hyperbolic (I think) to say, “There is no line.” Still: Hyperbole has a point.

*But could even some of those lines be crossed, some day?

**But could even some of those lines be crossed, some day?