Languages of Faction: Incivility and Democratic Resistance in the Early Republic

• In Event: Sources of Restraint in the American Republic

Abstract

Given the sharp disagreements that exist between individuals over their comprehensive doctrines and fundamental principles, contemporary democratic theorists have often raised concerns about the ability of pluralist societies to live together in what Teresa Bejan as so aptly described as “unmurderous coexistence” (Bejan 2017). To address these concerns, theorists have argued for the necessity of normative constraints of civility on public deliberation and political conduct to ensure stability and democratic legitimacy. Critics of these approaches have raised a variety of counterpoints, such as emphasizing how ideas about civility have historically been used to marginalize and exclude minorities from political participation, or that normative constraints on public deliberation could preclude the recognition of legitimate grievances raised by democratic actors in the context of structural inequality or a deficit of democratic spaces. In this paper, I look to the burgeoning public sphere of the early American republic and examine the speech and tactics of the populist private political associations loosely denoted as the Democratic Societies. Rather than focusing on their potential contributions to the development of American party politics (as has often been the approach of past scholarship on the Democratic Societies), I argue that these actors practiced a divisive politics of extremism on behalf of popular democratic claims. Acting as combative counter publics, Democratic Societies used a form of divisive, uncivil, and extreme speech that intentionally marginalized and attacked their supposedly antidemocratic opponents as part of a struggle to influence popular ideas about the nature of popular sovereignty, political participation, and the relationship between public opinion and the formal deliberations of the state. That divisive and uncivil speech may arise from the tongues and pens of democratic actors and suggesting that democratic actors may threaten the openness of a public sphere by attempting to marginalize and subvert the discourse of other publics, as I contend was the case with the Democratic Societies, resonates with popular concerns over hyper-partisanship and a lack of civility in American politics today, and raises the broader theoretical question of whether extreme and uncivil speech undermines or promotes open, plural, and democratic deliberation. The use of extreme and uncivil speech on behalf of democratic claims challenges conventional ideas about the need for civility and normative constraints on public deliberation because it complicates the presumption that without civility, political discourse subverts conditions necessary for legitimate democratic deliberation. Using the Democratic Societies as a historical example, I interrogate the counterintuitive position that extreme speech can serve the practice and pursuit of popular democracy, particularly under conditions of structural inequality and a democratic deficit, by enabling marginalized and excluded democratic actors to draw public awareness to and resist the efforts of political elites to restrict democratic participation. The case of the Democratic societies has challenging implications for contemporary normative theories of a legitimate democratic public sphere, civility, and the kinds of constraints necessary for democratic deliberation.

Author

• Noah R. Eber-Schmid, University of Oregon