Review of The Persuaders by Anand Giridharadas
A persuasive tale of the path forward for progressives
Below is my brief review of the book. Giridharadas has a keen eye for argumentation and is able to bring to light the underlying assumptions implicit in many political statements. It is certainly a skill that must be cultivated to truly understand someone else’s perspective and be able to highlight the assumptions someone hasn’t thought about in making their arguments. I think this book is great for anyone interested in canvassing, or just having smarter and more compassionate conversations about politics. It’s not the definitive approach to persuasion, but gives a good foundation for anyone not sure where to start.
One chapter that impacted me most described policy messaging and gave examples of how to frame conversations to have the most impact. One major piece of advice given was to focus on clear end goals and place less emphasis on the political tools and the complicated details of achieving the goal when you are first introducing a topic. Of course, I think the details are important and we should know them when having a conversation with someone, but they shouldn’t be the first point you bring up. First you need to invite people to picture the world you see. For example, “everyone who works for a living should earn a living wage, allowing them to provide for their families and support a strong society.” Instead of focusing first on the problem, “people are working two jobs and still need to rely on SNAP benefits to get by”, or a possible policy mechanism “we should raise the minimum wage”, or “we should expand child tax-credits”, you make clear that your goal is something that is good for everyone who works and would help create better conditions for everyone. From that shared goal for a better future, you can move to the policy solutions, but without a common understanding of the future you want, it’s very hard to even start a conversation.
This chapter also focused heavily on framing, which is something that I have been frustrated by recently. Framing is the first part of any discussion, and I have continuously run into the pitfall of implicitly accepting another person’s framing of an issue when I respond. Once you do so, it becomes very hard to backpedal. I know I personally need to spend more time thinking about whether I want to accept someone’s premises, or ignore the logical argument they are making and take a look at the underlying premises. For example, if someone says “I paid for my college education, so it’s unfair for other people to get their student loans forgiven.” My immediate response might be to ask how much they paid and compare it to how much people are paying now. While that seems like a reasonable response, it accepts the underlying premise that it could be unfair to forgive loans, and it’s only a matter of degree. If people now pay much more than people used to for college, then maybe it’s fair to forgive some level of loans to even things out. That response accepts that the person and I fundamentally agree on the concept of fairness, we just have a disagreement of degrees. However, a much more powerful response which leads toward the eventual solution that I hope for is to ignore the logic of the statement itself and try to reach an understanding on the definition of “unfair”. I might say “I believe that it is unfair to leave college prices to the market and keep college out of the reach of many Americans who could otherwise benefit from it.” By responding in this way, we can look at the framing of the issue and see if we can come to a shared concept of fairness and from there see if loan forgiveness seems reasonable, but when arguing degree there is always implicit that some level of loan forgiveness could be unfair. There are several better examples in the book that make the concept very clear.
The second chapter that sealed the deal for me was the final chapter on “deep canvassing”. Since I recently started phone-banking to promote common-sense gun regulation that creates safer living conditions for everyone, I appreciated the real examples of the power of deep canvassing. This is an idea that’s different from regular canvassing, which for a candidate or policy campaign can encourage people to move from door to door as quickly as possible, accepting when people say they’re on your side and moving on, spending more time with people on the fence, and possibly spending less time with people who clearly disagree with you. Deep canvassing has a goal of spending 30 minutes talking to each person. If they agree with you, that’s great! Ask them why and see if they’ll share personal experiences that led them to that position. In thinking more deeply about the rationale, you encourage people to use their “slow brain” rather than the quick, reflexive decision-making that we all do quite often. This can help strengthen someone’s conviction that the choice they made is the right one. When someone is on the fence or disagrees with you, the key of this strategy is to spend a lot of time listening to them without judging and understanding their perspective. Only after a person feels fully heard and is able to express their reasoning, can you try to present countering information, or your own personal story that highlights how the values they hold could lead them to supporting your position. The key is to ask analogous questions that lead someone to think about how the policy position affects people and to reflect on how they are personally connected to someone affected by the issue. This chapter did not try to cover up the challenges of deep canvassing. The author followed a canvasser to a house where the person went on a long rant touching on many different topics and full of truths, half-truths, and misinformation. There was such a flood of statements that the canvasser couldn’t do much but listen and provide a short pitch of their own perspective. I appreciated the reasoned framing and the realization that there is no “silver bullet” solution, but it seems like the best chance we have is to spend a lot more time listening with empathy, allowing people to reason to their own conclusions, and be a compassionate conversationalist who encourages people to make analogous comparisons to situations in their lives that might make them empathize with people facing hunger, a difficult path to legal citizenship, gun violence, or whatever social ill we hope to solve.
What does this all mean?
Something I’ve been struggling with personally is the idea that there are people who aren’t worth talking to because they will never change their minds. It is a very defeatist thought, that if generalized makes it very easy to avoid difficult conversations and justify it by saying “they wouldn’t have changed their mind anyway”. At least among my own circles/social media bubble, I’ve noticed a strong current of defeatist mindsets like this. It allows us to conserve energy and potential stress of an unproductive disagreement, but also leads us to accept that people won’t change. Of course, there are people who would take far too long and far too much energy to convince, but I can’t accept that they are more than a tiny percent of people. If I start from the conviction that there is a situation that I must use whatever agency I have to improve, I am giving up a large portion of my agency by telling myself that I cannot convince others to be supportive of my view.
What this book makes clear that has been missing from the left (in my limited experience of it), is a deep emphasis on relationships and trust that leads people to more seriously consider your point of view and critically examine their own. It may be much harder than just presenting facts and insisting that your facts are the right ones, but it seems to me it’s the best way to go and an approach I will try to use from now on.
In a serendipitous moment, I came across and read this excellent essay by A. R. Moxon on their Substack right after finishing this review. They provide a well-thought out counter, or possibly critical supplement to the ideas I presented above. When I first started reading it, I was going to say this was an example of the defeatist mindset I’ve noticed, but it is actually a sharp look at where we should be putting our energy and the most effective path to change. My one main disagreement is that I think that some people may be more inclined and have more energy to have persuasive conversations with others and I think it is valuable that they continue to do so (not on social media though). It shouldn’t be the only action they take, but I think it is a more important part of changing the atmosphere than Moxon indicates. I also think social media and the internet in general is not conducive to persuasive conversations, but I think there is a real value to improving the real-life relationships with the people you come into contact daily so that you can help change the atmosphere.
