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Constructive Conflict Guide >
The Complex Factors That Make Intractable Conflict So Difficult >
Challenges Posed by Bad-Faith Actors Who Who Are Trying to Profit by Undermining Collaboration and Power-with Democracy >
Strategies and Tactics Used by Bad-Faith Actors
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BI Article
Knife Edge Elections, the 51% Hammer Strategy, Hatemongering, and Scapegoating
Why are the United States' elections so close and so bitterly fought? Guy Burgess argues our knife-edge elections are caused by scapegoating, hatemongering, and our drive to get as much as we can for ourselves, by taking it away from the other side.
BI Article
The Blood-Boiling Trap
A look at how cognitive biases lead us to focus too much on things that are going wrong and not enough on things that are going (or could go) right.
BI Article
Guy and Heidi Burgess Talk with David Eisner about Threats to Democracy and How to Address Those
The Burgesses talked with David Eisner about what he thinks the threats to democracy are, and how (and when) we might respond to them. We agreed, citizen involvement in governance is key.
Related Folders
Opposing Fear and Hatemongering
This section focuses on strategies for resisting efforts to inflame tensions and persuade people that the concerns of the other side are illegitimate and not worthy of consideration.
Colleague Activities
The Village Square--Chris Stirewalt: Broken News
A former Fox News political editor gives an inside view of the rage-driven political environment in which we find ourselves.
Colleague Activities
Equal opportunity rage farming
Stretching the truth to arouse ire isn't just a tactic of the right; the left does it too. This short article appears toward the end of Better Conflict Bulletin's Feb. 22, 2024 Newsletter.
News and Opinion
Trump Tries to Scare People Far From the Protests
An Important and insightful look at the dangers of George Floyd-related fear mongering and an appeal to look at the full complexity of the situation.
News and Opinion
Turnout Myths Are the Democrats' Drug of Choice
Abandoning political persuasion in favor of "mobilize the base" strategies forces political leaders to rely on fear and hate mongering strategies that further drive the escalation spiral.
News and Opinion
Bad incentives and the politics of fear
An exploration of the complex and often hypocritical interplay between real-world threats, political reactions to those threats, public opinion, and electoral outcomes.
News and Opinion
Moms for Liberty: 'We Do Not Co-Parent With the Government'
A story about a case in which efforts to challenge political opponents crosses the line into dishonest hatemongering.
News and Opinion
Why Activists Keep Telling You the World is Ending
Reflections on our tendency to view today's big challenges in apocalyptic and existential terms (and the role that fear mongering activists play in all of this).
News and Opinion
Why My Generation Hates Jews
A heartbreaking account of how the now common educational practice of bifurcating society into oppressed and oppressor groups has metastasized in ways that have produced a generation with deeply anti-Semitic beliefs -- all of the name of social justice.
News and Opinion
Trump Voters Are America Too
An observation that the hateful rhetoric seen on the right is not an aberration. It is a reflection of what we think of each other. (Sadly, the rhetoric on the left is similarly hateful.)
News and Opinion
Governments Are Creating A Fake Hate Panic To Censor, Interfere In Elections, And Imprison Their Political Enemies
A critical look at the vast apparatus that is being mobilized to combat hate speech (as least as it is seen from the political left).
News and Opinion
Doom dominates 2024 messaging as Trump and Biden trade dire warnings
A look at the fear (and hate) mongering rhetoric that is now dominating the US Presidential campaign -- rhetoric that is going to make it even harder for one side to accept defeat.