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.)
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.)