Coke or Pepsi?

Its been a far while since I put virtual pen to metaphysical paper. Partly because the various news stories and political meanderings of the last few months have not delivered anything in the way of new insights or considerations, partly because once one falls out of the habit of capturing and recording thoughts it is difficult to get back on the horse.

That said, I did formalize a thought which has been bouncing round for a while now, and may sustain a longer discussion - the effective use of Branding in the modern world.

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Branding in its commercial sense is the association of positive ideas with a particular brand or make. Once you've established the idea that your trainers are better, your coke tastier, your mortgages cheaper or your bikes speedier, then a huge premium can be charge for what are, objectively, comparable (or even inferior) goods.

The major brands of the world are worth billions on their own, Apple, the world's most powerful brand according to Forbes, is worth $100 billion. In effect you would wipe this amount off Apple's share price if everyone forgot the past and just looked at the facts as they stand today.

And branding has jumped from the commercial and advertising world to the political world. It has become axiomatic that you no longer need to respond to someone's arguments if they can instead brand them a Nazi. This is such a clearly observed phenomenon that is has even been the source of a behavioral law; Godwin's Rule of Nazi Analogies, which states that if you let an internet discussion on any topic run for long enough, someone is going to get called (or at least compared to) a Nazi. The political gains to this approach are clear - rather than engaging with the facts of a matter, or the arguments laid out, you need simply directly, and personally, assault the person with whom you are debated. Once you have successfully hung your pejorative label of choice around their shoulders you can then simply dismiss their arguments. After all, how could anything suggested by such a person be worth considering?

From this I feel there are at least three examples of this behaviour which bear consideration in our current climate;

1.) The Climate Deniers

Contrary to the ever more grandiose claims of various (extremely biased) institutions and individuals, the ""science"" on climate change has not been categorically settled (or more precisely in this context; AGW or Anthropomorphic Global Warming). Climate science does not abide by the most basic of scientific principles; that a testable and disprovable hypothesis must be established, and then should data show your predictions to be in error, your hypothesis is wrong. Instead climate change institutions continue to pronounce ever more certainty in their theories, while simultaneously failing to deliver predictions borne out by data.

While I do not want to derail into an extended debate around the political and financial pressure brought to bear in the interests of the 'green' agenda, I do wish to make the point that there is not consensus in the scientific community around the causes and extent of climate change, in the same way that, for example, the scientific community came to accept the existence of the Higgs Boson after the recent experiments at CERN.

This distinction is used for a reason - the existence of the Higgs particle was not a political matter,  and was therefore resolved in the way most scientific matters are - through discussions, experimentation and repeated, independent, interpretation of data. It is interesting to compare this to the way climate debates are handled.

The pro-climate lobby has successfully branded those who oppose them as "deniers" a term, which, however accurate in a grammatical sense, has very clear pejorative overtones. It implies that those who refuse to agree with the "consensus" (second bit of branding - make out that every but some fringe loonies agree with you) are dangerously short sighted or even willfully refusing to accept the clear truth. In the same way that there were those who denied the world was round or that deny the Holocaust took place, climate change "deniers" are painted as wrong by their very nature, with virtually no publicity or response given to the points they make.

Contrast this situation with one in which the branding is reversed and we have climate scientists and climate zealots (or alarmists as the term has slowly begun to seep in). Next time you read an article about global warming replace all instances of "denier" with "scientist" and preference anyone speaking up in favor of the AGW narrative as a "climate alarmist".  Even relatively benign articles can be significantly altered through such branding.

2.) Welfare Entitlement

There has been a consistent attempt over the last sixty years to normalize the act of receiving state benefits. Why this is is open to debate. The cynical (me included) will say that if you wish to build a client state of those dependent on state handouts you have to first make it socially acceptable to take those handouts. Those of a more liberal bent may say that its necessary to ensure that the most vulnerable are able to receive support without becoming an underclass and being permanently locked out of society. The more extreme brand of socialists may even say that the successful have no right to their wealth, and so redistributing it should be applauded. Wherever you sit on this scale of explanatory tribalism, the fact remains that the language around welfare has changed, and with this new branding has come a different view on similar practices.

Welfare support was once called "National Assistance" for which you had to apply, and be judged worthy. It was just what it said - help provided by the country as a whole, to support those in situations deemed not necessarily of their own devising, but for which the majority of people would probably agree a helping hand may be in order. The wording is important here "Assistance" is clearly something extra not the whole of it. Assistance helps you do something you could do anyway a little bit easier, or make something impossible merely difficult. By the same extension when you applied for National Assistance you were, sometimes literally, going cap in hand to the representatives of your society and asking for help. It was humbling, it may even have been a embarrassing for those with a stubborn or proud streak. It was something done because you had no alternative.

Today we have Benefit Entitlements - although the system is broadly the same - the state provides financial support to those in various situations (unemployment etc etc), the terminology is completely different. Entitlement is a remarkably powerful term, in the private sector or normal day-to-day living the only things we can claim "entitlement" to are debts - things we are owed under law and which have, for whatever reason, been withheld. As citizens we are entitled to vote for our representatives and to be treated equally under the law - rights which a great many men have fought and died for over the centuries since the English first began to replace limits on a King's God-given entitlement to rule.  Yet today we talk of entitlements not as the implementation of divine will, or as the foundations of our democratic system, today, we talk of entitlements to have money handed out to you for not wanting to work, money taken from others through taxation.

Tell someone they are entitled to something and you set a remarkably different expectation compared to telling someone they can apply to your for assistance. Yet that is exactly how successive governments have branded welfare payments. As such it is remarkably difficult to suggest even limiting the growth in welfare before a howling cry is sent up - after all you are suggesting taking away people's entitlements under god and law. How would the current welfare debate be shaping up if we still called it "National Assistance?" or even "Taxpayer Funded Assistance?" (My personal choice of nomenclature). It would certainly make it easier for a minister to stand up in the House and state "We are looking for ways to reduce the costs of Taxpayer Funded Assistance" rather than the daunting task now before him (or her!) "This government will reduce people's welfare entitlements."

3.) Communists and Fascists

This one is a little more generic than the two above, but it bears thinking about. As I mentioned at the beginning of this piece, Nazism (and fascism in general) are so engrained in our national psyche as purveyors of evil that we almost instinctively accept the premise that those with radical right wing beliefs must also be homicidal (or genocidal) maniacs intent on global domination. Yet we have no such horror when confronted with the extremes of the Left. Why?

Branding is again the answer here, Marxism has been portrayed in the liberal West as the older and maybe a little eccentric cousin of socialism. Largely harmless, and the kind of thing you expect from university ethics professors or bumbling house of lords representatives. By branding Marxism (and extreme left wing views in general) as the abode of the eccentric academic they have been accepted in the main in a way that their right wing mirrors could never be.

Yes there is the matter of WW2, in which, for various geopolitical reasons, the communists were on our side, and fought against the fascists. Objectively however the communist regimes in Russia,  China, Cambodia and so on have inflicted death and economic misery on a scale at least as great of that as the fascists, and in the name of ideologies no more compatible with small c conservative, liberal capitalism then the regimes of Germany or Italy.

As could be done with either of the examples above I'd challenge anyone to read an article in which some is referred to as a communist (or Marxist) and replace those terms with fascist or even Nazi. How much of a difference does that make to the article, even when the content hasn't actually changed at all?

So... closing thoughts?

Most people don't want the facts, they don't even want the executive summary. Stereotypes emerge because we like the little colored boxes you can drop people, things and concepts into, because they make the world easy. Thought, decision making, and understand consequences isn't required if you can just read the label and know the answer - Liberals? Good, Deniers? Bad, Healthy - Good, Fat - Bad, and so on.

I doubt there is much that can be done to change this, the human condition is to mired in an eternal battle of "us" vs "them" for facts to ever come tribalism and its conceptual cousin Branding, but at least if people start being aware of the impact , maybe the odd person will actually make a decision based on the facts , rather than the insulting label applied to the speaker.

Happy Trails

/Z