“They’re in the market for some way of making sense of the world.”

Anand Giridharadas on being a better persuader.

Anand Giridharadas

It’s not unusual in current debate for anyone who disagrees with us to be attacked or ignored as a relic of the past who’ll never be convinced. But by doing so, could we be abandoning people who could be persuaded to join our cause? Indeed, abandoning people who genuinely need us to help them make sense of their world and find some peace & happiness?

Anand Giridharadas thinks so. He’s the author of The Persuaders - Winning Hearts and Minds in a Divided Age. And he has a lot of compelling stuff to say in a recent episode of The Gray Area podcast about the importance of compassionately engaging segments of the public who are not our cause champions, and who may even speak out against the values we believe in.

…a lot of people are afraid of a future that feels different to them, where it feels less clear how they're gonna fit in, that feels full of new things that make them feel irrelevant or displaced. So they can't quite keep up.

…They wonder how they'll fit. They wonder who they'll be in that new reality. That fear may present similarly to loathing, but it is in some ways pre loathing. It has not yet been organised either way. And the Right sees that fear and is trying to organise it into loathing.

And I think the Left needs to see that fear and organize it into love. Not view it as congealed, as a fait accompli, as something that cannot be won over. That fear is a normal transitional fact of a society that, yes, is actually going through a whole bunch of change in redefining our relations to each other, redefining the ideas of the country.

We are trying to do that, and the idea that we wouldn't have some sympathy for the fact that there's gonna be some people who are like “ah, this seems like a lot”… It is precisely at that moment that we have to have a better story to tell them than the other side does. We have to mercifully, lovingly, but also clearly bring them in, into our cause. We have to have patience when people don't get it and say the wrong thing, while at the same time defending the right of others in our movement to not be degraded constantly. It's a very, very tough balancing act we have, but I think it is a balancing act in defense of a future that's gonna be a lot of fun and that's gonna be a lot more just…

Giridharadas argues we need to be wary of lumping together those who are genuinely working to oppose progressive causes with those who have natural confusion and fear about their place in the future, and are looking for some way to make sense of the world. At the moment, conservative voices give that latter group a story that makes sense of change - that it’s a bad, woke undermining of stable society. By abandoning this segment, progressives leave that as the only story they hear. But if we tell them a different story, if we paint them a picture of a positive, exciting alternative future, it’s very possible to change their minds and win them to our cause.

…moderates are people who are short of a worldview, right? … They are busy, they're working multiple jobs, they're not thinking about these issues often or ever. And they basically are casually in the market for some way of making sense of the world.

And they have these little prompts and stimuli. They have a training at work on race that kind of annoys them for a second. They have their kids coming home saying, “the Founding Fathers are all bad people, Mommy.” Like, this is not their life. This is, like, these little stimuli. And you have an opportunity to win the battle for their confused hearts and minds. That's what moderates are.

And you do that in many ways. Not by coming to them, but by making them want to come to you. Making your side more attractive. Offering explanations of the world that feel more compelling. And having people in their lives - their nieces and nephews and cousins and coworkers - seem so excited and purposeful because they are in your movement, that these kind of unconverted people want to join your movement. It's the “When Harry Met Sally” Katz Delicatessen Theory of Politics. You want people to be like that old lady in the diner who looks at Meg Ryan and says. “I'll have what she's having.”

In other words, as Steven Guilbeault would say, we need to sell them the beach.

And here’s the exciting bit - this is more than just opinion. There’s evidence to support Giridharadas’s take.

The success of “deep canvassing” - engaging in conversation in a non-judgmental way that invites honesty and focuses on sharing stories instead of facts and arguments, to reach people in an emotional way - has been found to create long-term change in people’s opinions and behaviour since it was first tried in Los Angeles in 2008 in the wake of the defeat of a vote for same-sex marriage.