Three delegates are going to enter a game of re-election [1]. There is a chair responsible for putting a hat on each of them before their electoral campaigns begin, such that the hat of each delegate will only be visible to the other two. They know that there are only four hats: three white hats (symbolizing the good guys) and a single black hat (symbolizing the bad guy). As soon as the chair puts three of the four hats on the delegates, the electoral campaigns begin…

1) If a delegate sees a black hat on any of the other delegates, he can immediately conclude that he is white hat, and he can make this objective declaration: “This delegate is black hat, but I am white hat!” The other white hat will probably do the same, and they will thereby guarantee their re-election as white hats. In this case, the black hat delegate was sacrificed by the chair.

2) If a delegate sees two white hats on the other delegates, he cannot immediately know what his hat is. So he observes the other delegates’ reactions:

— If the others make an immediate declaration against him, then he loses the election. He reasons that he must be objectively black hat and that the chair must be responsible for his sacrifice.

— If the others are seen to hesitate, then he reasons that he must be objectively white hat, but that’s no relief in a democratic election, as the objective hats do not determine the final outcome! As the other two delegates make up the majority, they can still sacrifice him by making a pact on behalf of the nation. They can guarantee their own re-election by making this subjective declaration: “As the white hat majority, we decide that he is black hat!” As long as the subjective opinion belongs to the majority, the chair will behave as if it were the objective truth. In this case, a white hat delegate is being sacrificed by being stigmatized as a black hat.

Under these democratic conditions, even if the chair did not sacrifice any of them, the delegates have sufficient motivation to sacrifice one among themselves to guarantee their own success. But who will be sacrificed?

The democratic freedoms will only spare the more friendly and social and popular delegates who can quickly ally with another delegate, gain their trust and turn them to their side. The delegate who has the less connections, less tolerance for chitchat, less extroversion and more introversion will be inevitably stigmatized and sacrificed for the greater good of the national democratic majority.

As exemplified by this scenario, when freedoms are defined by representative democracy, the unjust hateful stigmatization of the minority naturally follows from the delegates’ rush and haste to vindicate themselves and guarantee their re-election.

In sum, what looks like hatefulness is actually just haste and hurry, and what looks like fatefulness is actually just fast and fury.

Işık Barış Fidaner is a computer scientist with a PhD from Boğaziçi University, İstanbul. Admin of Yersiz Şeyler, Editor of Žižekian Analysis, Curator of Görce Writings. Twitter: @BarisFidaner

Notes:

[1] This game is inspired by a logical problem called Three Prisoners. I will use masculine pronouns for simplicity. See “Three Prisoners and Four Discourses”