In another comment I’ve raised various objections to what seems to me to be Zack’s overall line of argument here, but I want separately to address the claim at the very end:
Thus, supporters of the regime naturally think dissidents are making a mistake; dissidents naturally think regime supporters are the enemy in their conflict.
That sounds clever and insightful, but is it actually right? I don’t think so. I mean, the second half is probably right—dissidents do generally (and for good reason) view supporters of the regime they’re objecting to as their enemies. But isn’t it also true that supporters of any regime generally view dissidents as their enemies? (For the more oppressive sort of regime Zack’s conjuring up here: how do you think Nazi supporters felt about e.g. the French resistance? How do you think Vladimir Putin’s faithful think about opponents of the war in Ukraine? For the at-least-superficially less oppressive sort most of us are living in, where you need to go further to count as a “dissident”[1], how do you think fans of liberal democratic capitalist states generally think of neoreactionaries or revolutionary communists? Or, turning from actual government power to the sort of cultural thing Zack might have in mind, what’s the usual attitude of progressive media/academic types to people proposing “human biodiversity” or to “gender critical feminists”?
[1] It’s pretty much the case that one only speaks of “dissidents” when referring to oppressive systems. But I’m trying to consider honestly what sort of person might be thought of as a “dissident” in the context of somewhere like the contemporary US or UK, and I’m pretty sure they need to go well beyond “I disagree with the policies of the current government” to be called that; I think the criterion is something like “disagreeing energetically enough, or fundamentally enough, to be at risk of actual reprisal from those in power”.
It seems to me that in all these cases the allies of the (literal or metaphorical) regime have just as strong a tendency to frame things as a conflict as its opponents.
But I’m trying to consider honestly what sort of person might be thought of as a “dissident” in the context of somewhere like the contemporary US or UK
A person who says something politically incorrect and gets fired? Or gets in prison if someone decides it was hate speech (more likely to happen in UK).
I think the first of those would be a reasonable analogue for “dissident” when considering Orthodox Progressive Culture as the Power of interest, and possibly the second when considering the government as the Power of interest. In both cases my sense is that the representatives of said Power would see the people in question as enemies (conflict theory) more than as people who are simply making an unfortunate mistake (mistake theory). So these also seem like conspicuous non-examples of Zack’s claim.
I guess it would be better to simply say “governments typically do this” and “dissidents typically do this” rather than encoding it in the language of mistake/conflict that requires additional effort to decode.
I can’t even say whether I think you are right or wrong here, because I am more confused than helped by the abstraction.
There’s potentially an aspect of this dynamic that you’re missing. To think an opponent is making a mistake is not the same thing as them not being your opponent (as you yourself point out quite rightly, people with the same terminal goals can still come into conflict around differences in beliefs about the best instrumental ways to attain them), and to think someone is the enemy in a conflict is not the same thing as thinking that they aren’t making mistakes.
To the extent that Mistake/Conflict Theory is pointing at a real and useful dichotomy, it’s a difference in how deep the disagreement is believed to lie, rather than a binary between a world of purely good-faith allies who happen to be slightly confused and a world of pure evil monsters who do harm solely for harm’s sake. And that means that in an interaction between dissidents and quislings, you probably will get the dynamic that Zack is pointing out.
Dissidents are likely to view the quislings as being primarily motivated by trying to get personal benefits/avoid personal costs by siding with the regime, making the situation a matter of deliberate defection, aka Conflict Theory. Quislings are likely to view dissidents (or at least to claim to) as misguided (the Regime is great! How could anyone oppose it unless they were terminally confused?), aka Mistake Theory. However, this Mistake Theory perspective is perfectly compatible with hating dissidents and levying all manner of violence against them. You might be interested in watching some interviews with pro-war Russians about the “Special Military Operation”: a great many of them evince precisely this perspective, accusing Ukrainians of making insane mistakes and having no real interests opposed to Russia (i.e. they don’t view the war through Conflict Theory!), but if anything that makes them more willing to cheer on the killing of Ukrainians, not less. It’s not a universal perspective among Putin’s faithful, but it seems to be quite common.
The dynamic seems to be not so much that one side views the other with more charity (“oh, they’re just honestly mistaken; they’re still good people”) so much as that one side views the other with more condescension (“oh our enemies are stupid and ignorant as well as bad people”).
I agree (as I’d already said) that there isn’t a nice dichotomy where some people see their opponents as beings of pure evil who do what they do solely because they are bad, and others see them as simply mistaken and therefore not in any way opposed.
I am not convinced that this in any way means that in a dissidents/quislings situation you will get the dichotomy Zack claims, and once again I point to the various examples I’ve given; I think that in all of them (and also the two more suggested by Viliam) the quislings will typically have just as conflict-y an attitude as the dissenters.
(I think the key distinction between a mistake theorist and a conflict theorist is: the mistake theorist thinks that it will be helpful for their purposes to address the other side with evidence and arguments, and try to arrive at mutual understanding; the conflict theorist thinks that won’t do any good, or cares more about playing to the gallery, or whatever.)
For the avoidance of doubt, I don’t disagree that in some cases the quislings[1] will think that the dissenters[1] are (evil and hateful because they are) honestly mistaken. But I also think that in some cases the dissenters will think that the quislings are (evil and hateful because they are) honestly mistaken. The terminology may be unhelpful here; cases in which the word “quisling” seems appropriate will tend to be those where we think of the people in question as doing things they know are bad out of self-interest. But e.g. I bet plenty of those neoreactionaries and revolutionary communists think the advocates of liberal democracy are mostly honestly mistaken.
[1] It’s probably obvious but I’ll say this explicitly: I do not intend either “quislings” or “dissenters” to carry any particular presumption of rightness/wrongness/goodness/badness. “Quisling” means “person functioning as some sort of spokesperson for whatever ideas are held by the people and institutions with power” and “dissenter” means “person vigorously disagreeing with said ideas”. You can have admirable or despicable people in either category.
As for those Russians: if someone believes (1) that their opponents are simply making insane mistakes and that their real interests are aligned, and (2) that the right way to deal with this situation is to kill them, then I say that person is a conflict theorist not a mistake theorist. (To whatever extent we have to put them into one pigeonhole or the other, at least.)
In another comment I’ve raised various objections to what seems to me to be Zack’s overall line of argument here, but I want separately to address the claim at the very end:
That sounds clever and insightful, but is it actually right? I don’t think so. I mean, the second half is probably right—dissidents do generally (and for good reason) view supporters of the regime they’re objecting to as their enemies. But isn’t it also true that supporters of any regime generally view dissidents as their enemies? (For the more oppressive sort of regime Zack’s conjuring up here: how do you think Nazi supporters felt about e.g. the French resistance? How do you think Vladimir Putin’s faithful think about opponents of the war in Ukraine? For the at-least-superficially less oppressive sort most of us are living in, where you need to go further to count as a “dissident”[1], how do you think fans of liberal democratic capitalist states generally think of neoreactionaries or revolutionary communists? Or, turning from actual government power to the sort of cultural thing Zack might have in mind, what’s the usual attitude of progressive media/academic types to people proposing “human biodiversity” or to “gender critical feminists”?
[1] It’s pretty much the case that one only speaks of “dissidents” when referring to oppressive systems. But I’m trying to consider honestly what sort of person might be thought of as a “dissident” in the context of somewhere like the contemporary US or UK, and I’m pretty sure they need to go well beyond “I disagree with the policies of the current government” to be called that; I think the criterion is something like “disagreeing energetically enough, or fundamentally enough, to be at risk of actual reprisal from those in power”.
It seems to me that in all these cases the allies of the (literal or metaphorical) regime have just as strong a tendency to frame things as a conflict as its opponents.
A person who says something politically incorrect and gets fired? Or gets in prison if someone decides it was hate speech (more likely to happen in UK).
I think the first of those would be a reasonable analogue for “dissident” when considering Orthodox Progressive Culture as the Power of interest, and possibly the second when considering the government as the Power of interest. In both cases my sense is that the representatives of said Power would see the people in question as enemies (conflict theory) more than as people who are simply making an unfortunate mistake (mistake theory). So these also seem like conspicuous non-examples of Zack’s claim.
I guess it would be better to simply say “governments typically do this” and “dissidents typically do this” rather than encoding it in the language of mistake/conflict that requires additional effort to decode.
I can’t even say whether I think you are right or wrong here, because I am more confused than helped by the abstraction.
There’s potentially an aspect of this dynamic that you’re missing. To think an opponent is making a mistake is not the same thing as them not being your opponent (as you yourself point out quite rightly, people with the same terminal goals can still come into conflict around differences in beliefs about the best instrumental ways to attain them), and to think someone is the enemy in a conflict is not the same thing as thinking that they aren’t making mistakes.
To the extent that Mistake/Conflict Theory is pointing at a real and useful dichotomy, it’s a difference in how deep the disagreement is believed to lie, rather than a binary between a world of purely good-faith allies who happen to be slightly confused and a world of pure evil monsters who do harm solely for harm’s sake. And that means that in an interaction between dissidents and quislings, you probably will get the dynamic that Zack is pointing out.
Dissidents are likely to view the quislings as being primarily motivated by trying to get personal benefits/avoid personal costs by siding with the regime, making the situation a matter of deliberate defection, aka Conflict Theory. Quislings are likely to view dissidents (or at least to claim to) as misguided (the Regime is great! How could anyone oppose it unless they were terminally confused?), aka Mistake Theory. However, this Mistake Theory perspective is perfectly compatible with hating dissidents and levying all manner of violence against them. You might be interested in watching some interviews with pro-war Russians about the “Special Military Operation”: a great many of them evince precisely this perspective, accusing Ukrainians of making insane mistakes and having no real interests opposed to Russia (i.e. they don’t view the war through Conflict Theory!), but if anything that makes them more willing to cheer on the killing of Ukrainians, not less. It’s not a universal perspective among Putin’s faithful, but it seems to be quite common.
The dynamic seems to be not so much that one side views the other with more charity (“oh, they’re just honestly mistaken; they’re still good people”) so much as that one side views the other with more condescension (“oh our enemies are stupid and ignorant as well as bad people”).
I agree (as I’d already said) that there isn’t a nice dichotomy where some people see their opponents as beings of pure evil who do what they do solely because they are bad, and others see them as simply mistaken and therefore not in any way opposed.
I am not convinced that this in any way means that in a dissidents/quislings situation you will get the dichotomy Zack claims, and once again I point to the various examples I’ve given; I think that in all of them (and also the two more suggested by Viliam) the quislings will typically have just as conflict-y an attitude as the dissenters.
(I think the key distinction between a mistake theorist and a conflict theorist is: the mistake theorist thinks that it will be helpful for their purposes to address the other side with evidence and arguments, and try to arrive at mutual understanding; the conflict theorist thinks that won’t do any good, or cares more about playing to the gallery, or whatever.)
For the avoidance of doubt, I don’t disagree that in some cases the quislings[1] will think that the dissenters[1] are (evil and hateful because they are) honestly mistaken. But I also think that in some cases the dissenters will think that the quislings are (evil and hateful because they are) honestly mistaken. The terminology may be unhelpful here; cases in which the word “quisling” seems appropriate will tend to be those where we think of the people in question as doing things they know are bad out of self-interest. But e.g. I bet plenty of those neoreactionaries and revolutionary communists think the advocates of liberal democracy are mostly honestly mistaken.
[1] It’s probably obvious but I’ll say this explicitly: I do not intend either “quislings” or “dissenters” to carry any particular presumption of rightness/wrongness/goodness/badness. “Quisling” means “person functioning as some sort of spokesperson for whatever ideas are held by the people and institutions with power” and “dissenter” means “person vigorously disagreeing with said ideas”. You can have admirable or despicable people in either category.
As for those Russians: if someone believes (1) that their opponents are simply making insane mistakes and that their real interests are aligned, and (2) that the right way to deal with this situation is to kill them, then I say that person is a conflict theorist not a mistake theorist. (To whatever extent we have to put them into one pigeonhole or the other, at least.)