The Strange Politics of Disgust

Want to know why campaigns are disgusting? Because it's the easiest emotion to evoke - and there's a connection to our morality.

When people talk about emotion and politics, people might think about anger or hope, or outrage - but one of the strongest is disgust - and some politicians make an art of painting with disgust.

It’s the easiest emotion to evoke - and, as the old saying goes, just because it’s easy doesn’t make it right - or less costly in the long run.

It’s easy to evoke disgust. That’s just how humans are. That disgust is evoked by disease and decay - and the other is that it is possible to associate people with that disgust individuals and groups.

David Pizarro presented this Ted Talk and it’s one of the best I’ve seen.

He discusses how disgust is used to dehumanize people in the lead up to violence and conflict - and of how being disgusted, or experiencing disgust, contributes to people leaning a particular way.

Warning - it does have a couple of genuinely disgusting images in it but Pizarro warns you about them both. It also cites some vile propaganda, so be warned.

https://www.ted.com/talks/david_pizarro_the_strange_politics_of_disgust

“One of the features, though, of disgust, is not just its universality and its strength, but the way that it works through association. So when one disgusting thing touches a clean thing, that clean thing becomes disgusting, not the other way around.

This makes it very useful as a strategy if you want to convince somebody that an object or an individual or an entire social group is disgusting and should be avoided.

The philosopher Martha Nussbaum points this out in this quote:

“Thus throughout history, certain disgusting properties -- sliminess, bad smell, stickiness, decay, foulness -- have been repeatedly and monotonously been associated with ... Jews, women, homosexuals, untouchables, lower-class people -- all of those are imagined as tainted by the dirt of the body."

… These are disgusting properties that are trying to be directly linked to the social group that you should not like.”

We often talk about how we don’t think much of political campaigns. It’s not just that they are “negative” - it’s that they are disgusting, and deliberately so.