反對民粹主義應注意策略

Liberals worldwide met Donald Trump’s recent border bans with principled opposition, practical help for the victims and the occasional lapse into nonsense. Consider the Bathtub Fallacy, a staple of educated opinion for too long.

唐納德•特朗普(Donald Trump)最近出臺邊境禁令，促使世界各地的自由派人士表達有原則的反對，為受害者提供實際幫助——以及偶爾發(fā)表謬論。“浴缸謬論”就是很久以來受過良好教育的人士喜愛發(fā)表的觀點之一。

Whenever the state imposes a counterterror measure, especially one as brute as the US president’s, statistics are dug out to show that fewer westerners perish in terror attacks than in everyday mishaps. Slipping in the bath is a tragicomic favourite. We chuckle, share the data and wait for voters and politicians to see sense.

每當政府推行一項反恐措施，尤其是像美國總統(tǒng)的行政命令這樣蠻橫的措施，就會有一些統(tǒng)計數(shù)字被挖掘出來，表明死于恐怖主義襲擊的西方人少于死于日常事故的人。在浴缸中滑倒是人們最愛的既悲劇又滑稽的戲碼。我們輕聲發(fā)笑，分享數(shù)據(jù)，等待選民和政治人士變得明白事理。

For good reason, that epiphany never happens. Leaving aside the many curbs on freedom that governments enforce to prevent accidents — product regulations and tort laws, we call them — most people can intuit the difference between domestic misfortune and political violence. The latter is an assault on the system: the rules and institutions that distinguish society from the state of nature. Bathroom deaths could multiply by 50 without a threat to civil order. The incidence of terror could not.

這樣的頓悟永遠不會發(fā)生，理由很充足。拋開政府為了防止事故而對自由施加的許多限制——產(chǎn)品法規(guī)和侵權法——大多數(shù)人能夠憑直覺分辨家中發(fā)生的不幸事故與政治暴力的區(qū)別。后者是對體系的攻擊，而體系是讓人類社會有別于自然狀態(tài)的規(guī)則和制度。即使浴室死亡事件增加50倍，也不會威脅社會秩序?？植乐髁x事件則不然。

If the lawyers who volunteered to help unjustly detained arrivals at American airports showed liberalism at its best, the elision of terror with slippery porcelain is liberalism at its eye-rolling, clever-clever, unserious worst. In the coming years, reasonable people have to oppose populists while taking immense care in how they oppose them. Voters are watching. If they come to see a choice between demagogues who push security and national cohesion to paranoid extremes and liberals who take these things too lightly, the liberals should just forfeit the next few electoral cycles to save time and ballot paper.

如果說那些志愿幫助抵達美國機場后被不公正拘留的人們的律師表現(xiàn)出自由主義最好的一面，那么把恐怖威脅與滑溜的浴缸混為一談則表現(xiàn)出自由主義翻著白眼、自作聰明、不嚴肅的最糟糕的一面。未來幾年，合情合理的人們在反對民粹主義者的時候要非常小心他們反對后者的方式。選民在看。如果要讓選民在二者之間做出選擇：一是把安全和民族凝聚力推至偏執(zhí)極端的煽動家，二是過于輕率地看待這些事情的自由派人士，那么自由派人士還不如放棄接下來幾個選舉周期，以節(jié)省時間和選票用紙。

The most insidious art in politics is the steering of one’s opponent into fringe positions, almost without their knowledge. Leaders of the Third Way, Tony Blair in Britain, Bill Clinton in the US, did it by holding the centre so greedily that their adversaries had nowhere to go but their ideological comfort zones. Boxers call it “cutting off the ring”.

最陰損的政治藝術是在對手幾乎毫無知覺之間將其推至邊緣立場。第三條道路的領導者們，英國的托尼•布萊爾(Tony Blair)和美國的比爾•克林頓(Bill Clinton)做到了這一點;他們死死守住中間立場，讓他們的對手無處可去，只能縮回自己的意識形態(tài)“舒適區(qū)”。拳擊手們稱這種策略為“壓縮拳擊臺空間”(cutting off the ring)。

Today, populists do it through their own extremism. They bet on it being enough to incite liberals into righteous overreaction, and then on voters to favour rightwing stridency over the opposite kind. The first bet looks promising so far, the second seems a sure thing.

今天，民粹主義者通過自己的極端主義來做到這一點。他們打了兩個賭：這足以使自由派人士作出過度的正義反應;這進而會使選民更青睞右翼的強硬，而非左翼的堅定。第一個賭迄今看起來很有希望，而第二個賭似乎十拿九穩(wěn)。

This does not call for total intellectual capitulation to the other side. There is little electoral need, and much less virtue or dignity, in the parroting of alt-right dogma by people who correctly abhor the stuff. But liberal politicians will need to at least hold the hawkish line — on national security, crime, welfare dependency — that took them into office in the very recent past, and harden it on migration. At a time when the authoritarian provocation is so great, when the natural reflex is to redouble one’s liberalism in defiance of the zeitgeist, this will be some feat of strategic discipline.

這不是呼吁整個知識界倒向?qū)Ψ?。從選舉需要(更不用提道德或尊嚴)上說，正確地憎恨另類右翼教條的人們無需鸚鵡學舌般地復述這些教條。但自由派政治人士將至少需要在國家安全、犯罪、福利依賴方面保持在不那么久之前讓他們上臺的鷹派立場，并使自己在移民問題上的立場轉(zhuǎn)向強硬。在威權挑釁如此巨大之際，自由派人士的自然反應是頂住時代潮流，加倍展現(xiàn)出自己的自由主義，因此要達到上述境界將是戰(zhàn)略紀律上的某種壯舉。

Every political commentary has to stipulate that Trumpism is not the same as Britain’s impending exit from the EU, which is not the same as Marine Le Pen’s National Front in France, which is not the same as the rest of the continental far-right. But they elicit the same flavour of response from intellectuals and protesters. It is one that celebrates internationalism and human diversity as ends in themselves. For anyone who owes their life or livelihood to the west’s openness to outsiders, it is stirring to behold. But if it comes to define the official alternative to populism, if it crowds out hardheadedness on matters of security and identity, it will fail.

當前每一條政治評論都不得不聲明，特朗普主義與英國即將退出歐盟不是一回事，后者與法國馬琳•勒龐(Marine Le Pen)的國民陣線(National Front)不是一回事，而馬琳·勒龐與歐洲大陸其他極右翼政客不是一回事。但知識分子和抗議者對它們做出同樣的回應。這種回應稱頌國際主義和人類多元化，將其視為目的。對所有人生或生計受益于西方對外來者開放的人來說，看到這種回應是令人鼓舞的。但如果要用這種回應來定義針對民粹主義的正式替代選擇，如果這種回應排擠了在安全和身份認同問題上的務實態(tài)度，它就會失敗。

Liberalism only wins when it is dunked in molten steel. Before Mr Blair became code for transnational looseness, he stood for vigilance to crime, terror and, more contentiously, rogue states. The coming wave of anti-populist leaders will have to resemble him at his peak much more than Canada’s prime minister and dreamboat of cosmopolitan piety, Justin Trudeau. This is what the marchers and the venting celebrities should consider: not the futility of their efforts, but their inadvertent potential to drag politicians of goodwill into ideas and rhetoric that only sell in the most progressive jurisdictions.

自由主義只有在浸泡在鋼水中才會取得勝利。在布萊爾成為跨國混混的代碼之前，他代表著對犯罪、恐怖主義以及(這一點更具爭議性)流氓國家的警惕。未來的反民粹主義領導人將不得不更像巔峰時期的布萊爾，而不是世界主義虔誠的偶像、加拿大總理賈斯廷•特魯多(Justin Trudeau)。這是示威者和發(fā)泄不滿的名人們應該考慮的事情：不是他們的努力是徒勞的，而是他們可能在不經(jīng)意間用只在最具進步意識的司法管轄地才有市場的思想和言論套住善意的政治人士。

Of course, the ultimate problem with the Bathtub Fallacy is its fallaciousness, not its repellence to voters. It is wrong on its own terms. But logic can wait. Politics matters more. Mr Trump, Ms Le Pen, the British rightwinger Nigel Farage: there are no giants or geniuses here. They are beatable with patience and discipline. It would be worse than ironic if, in their efforts to de-liberalise the west, they made their opponents more liberal than they ever were before, than is sensible, than is electable.

當然，浴缸謬論的終極問題在于荒謬性，而非讓選民厭惡。它本身就是錯誤的。但邏輯可以先擱置一邊。政治更重要。特朗普、勒龐以及英國右翼分子奈杰爾•法拉奇(Nigel Farage)都不是偉人或者天才。只要有一點耐心和紀律，是可以打敗他們的。如果他們消除西方自由主義的努力讓對手在自由主義道路上走得更遠，以至于超出明智和可以當選的程度，那就比諷刺意味更糟糕了。

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