I've been doing some reading as I prepared my reference "post" on the Cold War - partly for research, and partly because i was anyway.
One of the things that reminded me of was the insistence on ideological purity - the "if you're not with us, you're against us" idiocy that reached its fanatical peak in McCarthyism.
The divisions we have now around management of the pandemic has exactly the same sort of "feel" about it - actually, no, that's not quite correct: the denialist minority have that same sort of blinkered, self-hypnotised and hysterical zealotry of McCarthy's maniacs (and quite a few violent extremists, I would suspect), whereas the other side is trying to find a way to communicate.
Rationality is not working - it rarely does against the combination of emotions of this intensity and a refusal to think clearly.
Attacks won't work - they only contribute to the self-injured air of righteousness.
So . . . what to do?
I've been trying to remember what got us out of the intellectual toddler tantrum aspects of the Cold War, and it seems to me that it was:
- the genuine suffering of those living under Marxist Communism;
- the courage of a few key people living under Marxist Communism;
- lucid, fluent appeals in support of freedom and human rights; and
- sad to say, the material excesses and flashiness of the capitalist world.
That last point won't work here, as the denialists think they are being victimised by being excluded from the rewards of being good members of the community.
The genuine suffering of the unvaccinated won't work either - if they do come round as a result of getting COVID, it is usually when they're about to be hooked up to a ventilator.
Similarly, their victimhood gives them what they think is courage.
So . . . that leaves: lucid, fluent appeals - but to genuine freedom, not the freedom to be a toddler throwing a tantrum over other people's right to life, and to human rights.
Those who are merely reluctant are not those I am referring to here - if they are genuinely "just" reluctant, they can be reached through argument from people that THEY consider credible - not just who have the most letters after their name.
Those insisting on ideological zealotry are in a different category: they have to approached the same way we do with violent extremists, by people with emotional competence and the capability of dealing with the denialists' attempt to deny the existence of death out of existence.
Think that sounds strange? That's a good part of what it is about - that, and a batch of other forms of extremism.
PS
I've continued to think on this (and have even written a couple of poems [here and here] to help me explore perspectives), and am even more strongly convinced that there are lessons for us in how the Cold War ended. More specifically, I suspect that just as zealots then saw the world did not end when we co-existed, so too will the ideologically rigid of these days, these last couple of years, come to yield to a less closed mental position when they see we do not - to use and mock a couple of the more extreme fantasies - get free 5G nor suffer mental control from various corporations [other than what has been done before through advertising and commercialism / neoliberalism], and they see our health is better and we, eventually, will thrive where the denialist fantasists do not. Already the deaths are more amongst them (on a per capita basis) than us - it will be sorrowfully long, but they will come to realise they were being told the truth. But too late for too many - and that will be on their heads, not ours.
