Far too often, modern American politics has come to resemble a form of “cosplay,” in which activists of various stripes cast themselves in the role of virtuous freedom-fighters standing up against an all-powerful, malevolent enemy force. This tendency has exacerbated as our pop culture has shifted toward comic book films and science-fiction movies as our key narratives, while politics have simultaneously moved online into radicalizing ideological echo-chambers. As a result, many Americans perceive political narratives along the lines of Manichean or apocalyptic fantasy tales, and cast themselves as heroic combatants in this storyline of existential struggle. One thought-provoking essay recently argued that in comic book films, “Fear is omnipresent, public institutions are not to be trusted, and the best we can hope for is benevolent vigilantes to take everything out of our hands.” The popularity of these movies likely reflect the growing civic distrust in the United States, and may shed light on a disturbing impulse within the American electorate to favor figures willing to defy institutional and legal norms.
Many Americans now are chafing at the limits of what can be quickly accomplished under an increasingly gridlocked U.S. political system. In their frustration, they are also losing sight of the humanity of their opponents. This is not an entirely new phenomenon. In the 1990s, militia members portrayed themselves as modern-day minutemen, casting Clinton Administration federal agencies such as the ATF as tyrannical. This red-state narrative conveniently & hypocritically disappeared when a right-wing president, George W. Bush, again took office. Recently, American political cosplay has revived, expanded, and taken on a more continental flavor, with Antifa wielding the black and red flags of leftist Spanish civil warriors, and with Alt-Right supporters cosplaying as Nazis, Confederates, and other extreme-right factions.
When groups are engaged in politics as cosplay, the use of uniforms clearly mark insiders from outsiders, forming a ritualistic display of group unity, rather than a coalition of like-minded people willing to have a conversation with outsiders. Contrast the civil rights marches and antiwar demonstrations of the 1960s and 1970s, or even the more ideologically sketchy Million Man March and Glen Beck’s “Restoring Honor rally,” whose participants generally did not wear uniforms, with the global rallies and marches of Klansmen and neo-fascist blackshirts and Marxist guerillas, whose participants did. In the aforementioned costumeless marches, at least someone could slip into the crowd unidentified, and one could not tell at a glance whether that person was a curious observer or an enthusiastic participant. The adoption of a uniform makes the group’s demonstration more implicitly militaristic, and makes it seem more plausible that violence may occur between group members and hostile non-members.
Once ideological adherents wear costumes, they move away from the “politics of conversation” and toward the “politics of confrontation”: a transformation of political interaction from an exercise in coalition-building and negotiation to a zero-sum struggle between in-group members and out-group members. Things get particularly dangerous when multiple costumed groups are clashing with each other, as occurred in Weimar Germany and to some extent happened in Charlottesville last year. Costumes are sometimes derived from history, in a sort of re-enactment of perceived historical grievances. An interesting thesis has been put forward in a recent book called In Praise of Forgetting by David Rieff about the dangers of historical knowledge. History can be dangerous when it is reduced into romantic or utopian narratives of good versus evil, rather than properly depicting the complexity of historical struggles. Too often, alienated individuals interpret history as a record of outrages to be avenged. Rieff contends that societies are better off not obsessing about past conflicts; the cult of the Confederate “Lost Cause” that emerged in the postbellum American South is one of many vivid examples he cites in support of his argument.
We need more of the politics of conversation, less of the politics of cosplay. It is important to note that left-wing groups are not immune to engaging in the aesthetics of cosplay, e.g. dressing up in silly animal costumes to advocate for the environment or “pussy hats” at a women’s march. Activists of all stripes should note: the more you sartorially designate yourself as “Other” than a typical member of the crowd, the less likely you are to persuade people that you are members of the same community, with the same concerns and values and interests. In the late 1950s and early 1960s, the clean-cut and well-groomed appearance of the civil rights protesters may have helped them win over Middle America, in part because they did not dress like an out-group.
Of course, many present-day advocates would dismiss the notion that “protesters should shave their scruffy beards and remove their bandanas in order to win over the soccer moms” as bourgeois or elitist. Whether one accepts the premise that activists should tailor their presentation to win over the masses depend upon where one falls on a fundamental divide: whether protest is intended primarily as (1) an act of self-expression, or (2) an act of awareness-raising, coalition-building, and persuasion. The former is more satisfying in the moment, but the latter is more effective in pushing forward the long-term prospects of the cause.
Morality in public policy is generally not as clear-cut as it is among the fictional characters at Comic Con, but in today’s world, some adult citizens seem to have a difficult time growing out of a Manichean, oversimplistic mindset in order to see the world seriously in all of its frustrating ambiguity and complexity. I believe that the politics of cosplay may be more emotionally satisfying, even exhilarating, to the participants, but the politics of conversation is more likely to be effective in furthering their political aims.
The few people who have been recruited away from extremist groups usually did not do so because rival protesters insulted or punched them, but rather because someone reached out to them without dehumanizing them, and gradually coaxed them to give up their radical beliefs. Clearly not everyone can be persuaded; there are those psychopaths and fanatics who cannot be neurologically altered, at least not by engaging their empathy. But persuasion is potentially effective with most people, and it is the only viable option in a democratic society. It also has the virtue of being less dangerous than the politics of Cosplay. Civil War re-enactments may be fun, but those re-enacting the scuffles between Nazis and Communists on the streets of 1920s Berlin ought to realize that they are playing a dangerous game. All it takes is a few escalating acts of violence for the “cosplay” to be transformed into ugly displays of discord that are just as horrifically real as the original events.