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Home » Moral Foundations in Action » Breitbart vs Occupy, Battle of the Foundations
Feb11 4

Breitbart vs Occupy, Battle of the Foundations

Posted by Jonathan Haidt in Moral Foundations in Action

Conservative blogger Andrew Breitbart lost his cool, to put it mildly, against the Occupy protestors outside of the C-PAC convention in Washington, Feb 10 2012. Pete Ditto, my colleague at YourMorals.org, sent me the video clip, along with an insightful analysis of the confrontation as a clash of moral foundations  (below).

As Pete explains:

“This is a beautiful demonstration of uncivil politics and the moral foundation clash underlying the culture war. Breitbart yells “behave yourself”.  He calls the occupy protestors “freaks and animals” and says they are “filthy” and “raping people.”  This seems a great illustration of the Authority/subversion foundation (behave yourself and respect tradition, don’t behave like freaks) blended with the Sanctity/degradation foundation (calling them filthy, animals, and rapists).  The protestors in turn go right for the symbolic touchstones of victimization (the Care/harm foundation) and oppression (the Liberty/oppression foundation) chanting “racist, sexist, anti-gay, right-wing bigots go away”.

 

4 Comments

  1. AV | February 12, 2012 at 4:49 am

    Actually, the chant is “Racist sexist anti-gay, Right-wing bigots go away”. Your post used racist twice.

    Reply
    • Jonathan Haidt | February 20, 2012 at 1:35 pm

      Oops, thanks so much for this correction! Fixed.
      jh

      Reply
  2. AV | February 12, 2012 at 4:54 am

    And another thing – he says they have to “stop raping people”, not that they are raping America. He has claimed in an interview that up to a dozen women were sexually attacked in OWS protests, so the reference was probably to that.

    Reply
    • Jonathan Haidt | February 20, 2012 at 1:35 pm

      and this one. Done.

      Reply

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