The Motte-and-Bailey Castle

When 'pushed' narrative (Bailey) and 'pulled' reality (Motte) collides, the veil of polarization disintegrates.

From An Inconvenient Truce Revisited by Rusty Guinn.

The concepts behind a motte-and-bailey castle are simple. The high vantage point of the motte is useful for defense and early warning of threats. The dirt used to dig a ditch or moat can be used in turn to raise the motte. Multiple stages of retreat – from fields to bailey and bailey to motte – permit useful defensive military strategies to be employed.

In polarized politics, framing issues using the motte-and-bailey doctrine still serves the original purpose of making extreme positions seem reasonable and attacks on those arguments seem unreasonable to the in-group. Yet the existence of mottes-and-baileys also permits each political pole to point exclusively to the baileys (the most aggressive premises) of the opposite side when it is useful to caricaturize their platform as extreme.

Have you ever wondered how it is possible that we often manage to judge those aligned with us to be almost uniformly reasonable, sensible and sane? How the hypocrisy, extremeness and dishonesty of our opponents know no bounds? Absurd on its face. Yet time and time again, we suspend our disbelief.

Powerful narratives have a way of shutting down our brains, you see. But that is the point. Keeping us enraged is the point. Forcing us to abstract our opponent into a caricature of dishonesty and bad faith is the point. Ensuring we don’t have time to consider our opponent’s humanity is the point.

Learning how to spot the motte-and-bailey rage generation machines that surround us is the only way to weaken their hold on us.

Victoria Parker joined up with professors Anne Wilson, Matthew Feinberg and Alexa Tullett to explore exactly this issue. Parker published a high-level summary in the Atlantic of certain findings from their paper. Both are worth reading on their own, but in short, they reveal the extent to which the motte-and-bailey strategies have been successful in creating a narrative of polarization in one of the remaining areas where most Americans are still more or less on the same page in Reality World.

In Narrative World, 61% of Red Tribe members believe that Blue Tribe members want to abolish the ‘irreversibly broken and racist’ police. In Reality World, only 28% of self-described liberals even somewhat agreed with that statement.

In Narrative World, 57% of Blue Tribe members believe that Red Tribe members thought the police were almost always justified in cases where they shot black people. In Reality World, only 31% of self-described conservatives even somewhat agreed with the statement.

None of this should surprise us. Missionaries did not build these mottes-and-baileys to reflect the will of the American people. They didn’t even build them to advance a policy outcome.

They built them to make us want to fight.

2020 U.S. Elections: “The Steal”

Red Tribe

• The ‘pushed’ narrative (Bailey) → The election was stolen through widespread fraud. That was the true coup attempt, and instead of charging them, we are trumping up charges against some folks who attended the rally and were goaded by Capitol Police into entering.

• The ‘pulled’ reality (Motte) → It was a dumb riot, not a coup. Really, we just want our elections to be safe, secure, and not subject to foreign interference.

Blue Tribe

• The ‘pushed’ narrative (Bailey) → This was a calculated and planned coup attempt, and GOP leaders who had the knowledge of any planned gathering or protest must be charged with sedition!

• The ‘pulled’ reality (Motte) → This protest became a violent riot. It was completely unacceptable in a civilized society and those involved should be punished.

COVID-19: "It’s Just a Flu”

Red Tribe

• The ‘pushed’ narrative (Bailey) → COVID is a plan-demic, nothing more than an excuse to give the state more power over us. Masks, the phony vaccine, the panic — it’s all here to make the weak cry for Mommy to protect them.

• The ‘pulled’ reality (Motte) → We’re not anti-vaccine, just anti-mandate! We’re not anti-mask, we just think we’re being lied to constantly by health officials.

Blue Tribe

• The ‘pushed’ narrative (Bailey) → We must heavily restrict public-facing businesses, require masks at all times, federally mandate vaccinations in all populations and nudge people towards correct behaviours. Anything less would be anti-science and harm both children and the elderly.

• The ‘pulled’ reality (Motte) → When it comes to a virus that is highly contagious even when asymptomatic, public health does become a matter of public policy.

An Inconvenient Truce

This essay was published on the 1st anniversary of the January 6th Capitol riots, when the rhetoric of political violence was rising. Today it is our reality.

We are mere days removed from Reid Hoffman, billionaire entrepreneur, publicly bemoaning that Donald Trump had not yet been martyred, and Elon Musk, billionaire entrepreneur, publicly suggesting that anyone with different opinions about the proper way to safeguard elections ought to be executed.

This is the environment in which a vile young man attempted to assassinate the former president. It is an environment in which we are systematically shepherded into escalating every political and social issue until it becomes something worth dying — or killing — over.

So what comes next? Over the coming days and weeks, we will all feel like the Other Team is cherry-picking our craziest people to make us all look insane and agitate their base. In turn, we will cherry-pick the craziest people from the Other Team to use as props, too.

The difference will be that we were right to do so, of course. Sometimes that may even have the rare benefit of being true. After all, there are a lot of things going on in our world and in our country that are deadly serious and demand a similar attitude from us.

For those not yet willing to consign America to the dark ravine of an accelerationist future, we have few options fully within our control. We can choose the language we use. We can ask those we love and trust to do so. We can take a break from the existential, worth-dying-for, worth-killing-for, end-of-America, end-of-Democracy rhetoric for a moment, even if we know in our deepest heart that we are right. We can think critically about whether we are being led into a fight that was never ours.

That is the lesson of the Motte-and-Bailey.