Things You Need to Know to Defend Democracy from Bad-Faith Actors
6. Civic Knowledge and Skills
Earlier in this Guide we distinguished between "Good-faith actors" and "bad-faith actors." Good-faith actors are people and organizations who are honestly trying to pursue their interests, values, and needs in ways that at least do not harm others, and ideally, seek mutually beneficial solutions to problems. "Bad-faith actors," on the other hand are people and organizations who try to subvert or destroy democratic institutions and processes to advance their own selfish goals.
Bad-faith actors have always been around, but they have been given a great deal of help by current technology, particularly social media and the Internet that allows them to spread their bad-faith messages far and wide instantaneously and at little or no cost. The result has been the weakening of democracies around the world, as hate- and fear-mongers can easily gain the upper hand over good-faith actors who are reluctant to spread disinformation to bolster their causes.
For this reason, good-faith actors not only need to use constructive strategies and tactics to pursue their own goals. They must also work diligently to block or discredit or otherwise weaken the bad-faith actors who are working against their good-faith efforts. This section shares a number of strategies and tactics that are useful for blocking or weakening bad-faith actors. These include
- strategies to prevent and overcome information warfare,
- strategies to overcome fear and hate mongering,
- strategies to overcome economic exploitation,
- strategies to block and prevent intimidation and small-scale violence
- strategies to bock and prevent large-scale violence
- building support for tolerance and co-existence,
- strengthening support for moderates who try to work with people on all sides of a conflict to find mutually-acceptable solutions
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