That’s a bold claim. What about Nirvana? Or Jay-Z? Yeah, influential acts, but consider this: Fugazi directly influenced Nirvana as well as Jay-Z, Pearl Jam, Rage Against the Machine, the Red Hot Chili Peppers, Lorde, Blink-182, Kesha, the Foo Fighters, Billie Eilish (thanks to the musical tastes of her older brother). All of them are huge Fugazi fans. When you consider that numerous musicians influenced by Fugazi are big influencers themselves, you realize today’s musical landscape would have looked radically different were it not for this uniquely named band.
According to one music journalist, Fugazi, drawing on an array of reggae, funk, and jazz artists, established itself “as a channel through which to vent the confusion, rage, and anxiety bred by hostility to the absurd security of conformist culture.” Unlike giants such as the Beatles, Led Zeppelin, U2, or Garth Brooks, who became money-making machines, Fugazi stood for artistic integrity, bold political activism, anti-consumerism, anti-corporatism, and a do-it-yourself (DIY) mentality. Its enemies were self-importance, showmanship, and “selling out.” More than any rock or pop band of the late 1980s and 1990s, Fugazi stripped away the puffery and elevated its audience to active participants rather than fawning worshippers.
These guys were hard-core artists with a soul. No matter how popular they became, Fugazi only charged fans five dollars to attend concerts, and ten dollars for a record, tape, or CD. To keep costs low, the band said f%$@ it to roadies, booking agents, distributors, accountants, and other money-grubbing professionals whose services musicians feel compelled to buy. Members of Fugazi recorded their own albums. They slept in fans’ living rooms. They just didn’t care about becoming rock stars. Remembering how much it sucked being a teenager barred from attending shows, they refused to play shows that weren’t open to all ages. They embraced a general ethic of inclusion, welcoming everyone as fans including women (whom they didn’t objectify sexually) and people of color (whom they didn’t treat as “others”). A great deal of popular music today stands up to injustices of one sort or another, whether misogyny, homophobia, violence, economic inequality, materialism, unethical government intrusion—you name it. That very gesture is a Fugazi thing.
Fugazi declined to play in bars because band members didn’t want the musical experience muddied by intoxication. They spurned mainstream magazines that published alcohol and tobacco company advertisements targeting impressionable teenage readers. To maintain creative control, they declined million-dollar offers from major labels. They skipped music videos because the oversexualized content splattered on the likes of MTV repulsed them. To minimize transactional relationships with fans, they didn’t sell T-shirts, stickers, or buttons at shows. Fugazi’s priorities were clear: music first, fans second. The band always—always—supported the little guy over big business.
People assume that artistic integrity and commercial success are mutually exclusive. Fugazi smashed that assumption. The band sold more than three million records during its seventeen-year existence. As of this writing, over 1.5 million monthly listeners stream its music, even though the band has been on “hiatus” since 2003. On a deeper level, Fugazi succeeded where so many musical artists failed: its members shifted cultural norms, creating a movement of grassroots, DIY, socially conscious musical artistry. The band expanded the circle of moral concern in music, which is why famous musicians like Kurt Cobain and Eddie Vedder invoked the names of Fugazi band members in interviews, hoping the integrity would rub off.
What was the secret to Fugazi’s success as principled insubordinates? One answer is sheer determination. Between 1987 and 2003, Fugazi played more than a thousand live shows, amounting to one live show roughly one out of every five days for seventeen years straight! That is serious visibility. But there is a second, more important answer. Fugazi became influential because its members mastered what we might call the “underdog’s guide to influence.” Like Charles Darwin, they had an uncanny knack for getting their points across in ways that won over members of the majority, including music industry power brokers and fans who never before identified with the punk rock community.
Scientists have established that people with minority status (a designation that by definition applies to rebels) instigate change more readily if they’re consistent in what they say, without being overly rigid. Fugazi checked that one off. The band lived by an ethos called “straight edge” that translated into a ban on drugs, drinking, smoking, meat eating, and nonconsensual sex. While band members espoused these values for themselves, they never pushed them on fans. On stage, in interviews, and during face-to-face conversations, members of Fugazi clarified that theirs was simply one approach to living, not the only way. They refused to cast judgment on others who chose differently, nor did they expect fans to copy or obey them. Because fans didn’t view Fugazi as preachers, they were more inclined to listen to Fugazi’s opinions and adopt “straight edge” lifestyle habits for themselves.
Scientists have arrived at a number of fascinating insights that inform how those with minority opinions most effectively persuade others. These insights come baked into several psychological theories, including Conversion Theory, Conflict Elaboration Theory, the Context/Comparison Model, the Source-Context-Elaboration Model, and the Elaboration Likelihood Model. Cutting through this sea of academic jargon, I’ve arrived at certain governing principles rebels can use to maximize their persuasive potential. Disregard these principles, and you all but ensure your failure. Pursue them, like Fugazi and other principled insubordinates have, and you’re in a much better position to gain a hearing.
Asked “Who is you favorite band?,” my answer remains the same since the age of thirteen: Fugazi. Quizzical looks follow, and then I rattle off details about them before playing their greatest album, Repeater. I listen to them when working out, on long car rides, or for a jolt of vitality. My three daughters know Fugazi. Past Father’s Day gifts include a flask with the band name inscribed, hand-drawn bookmarks of album covers, and a ceramic mug with lyrics. When I first moved to the suburbs of Washington, D.C., I met lead singer Ian MacKaye at a local church concert where 100% of the proceeds went to clean needles and contraception for streetwalkers. After finishing this chapter, make sure to appreciate Fugazi’s cathartic fusion of musical sounds, not just their cultural contributions. Give these beloved songs a chance (one from each album): “Waiting Room,” “Repeater,” “Reclamation,” “23 Beats Off,” “Bed for the Scraping,” and “Break.”
THE BIG IDEA
There are five essential principles rebels can use to maximize the persuasive potential of their message.
PRINCIPLE 1: WORK IT FROM THE INSIDE
Rebels take note: audiences will more likely listen if they view you as a member of their in-group rather than as an outsider. We know this in part thanks to studies such as one conducted at the University of Arizona in the mid-1990s. Legalized gay marriage seemed unfathomable then. Government officials adopted the infamous “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy that allowed gays to serve in the military so long as they hid their sexual identities. In this social milieu, researchers asked students supportive of gay rights to read an article called “The Case Against Gays in the Military.” Some students learned that the Student Association of the University of Arizona authored the article—in other words, it reflected a mainstream opinion within the student community. A second group learned that a small, radical, conservative organization from the University of Arizona wrote it—in other words, a minority within their University of Arizona tribe. A third group learned that a radical group of outsiders from another college penned the article.
Students objecting to the anti-gay article (perceiving it as contrary to their core beliefs) had more than twice as many positive thoughts about the arguments if they thought a mainstream member of their University of Arizona tribe wrote it. However, students spent more time systematically processing the article’s message and retained more information if they thought minorities from their tribe wrote it. Minorities have special persuasive powers, if and only if they articulate how a common identity exists between themselves and their audience.
The mechanisms underlying this phenomenon are pretty interesting. When someone in an in-group thinks differently from the rest, that dissenter elicits a spark of curiosity in the majority. Two questions pop into audience members’ heads: “Why does this person think differently from the rest of us?” and “What information does this person have that I don’t?” In the short term, deviance might unsettle the group, causing tension or conflict. But it fuels innovation by bringing attention to new ideas, unresolved problems, or a broader list of options. Group members listen carefully to acquire knowledge and wisdom. They reassess their existing beliefs, behaviors, and policies to determine which have become outdated and unworkable. Because the deviant, as an insider, possesses credibility that an outsider doesn’t, they can better catalyze change.
THE BIG IDEA
When you take time to first establish common bonds with an audience, and in particular to support group norms and a positive group identity, you gain what social scientists refer to as “idiosyncrasy credits.” You rack up cultural capital, if you will. When proposing innovative ideas, you can “spend” this cultural capital in return for support from fellow group members.
If you’re politically conservative trying to convince conservative friends to embrace gun safety legislation, remind them of your shared conservative beliefs and track record of voting for Republicans. Then make your pitch. Sidewalk preachers usually fail to persuade listeners because they don’t or can’t establish a common, “insider” bond; their message gets lost before anyone even hears it. You can and should do better.
PRINCIPLE 2: SPARK THEIR CURIOSITY, NOT THEIR FEAR
You can be the smartest person in the world with the best idea, but if you frighten the crap out of people and alienate them, they won’t pay you a lick of attention. Dr. Ignaz Semmelweis can attest to that. Back in 1847, before medical science knew much about germs, Semmelweis argued that handwashing prevents human sickness. Conventional wisdom at the time held that diseases spawn from imbalances in the relative amounts of blood, phlegm, black bile, and yellow bile, also known as the “four humours.” Dr. Semmelweis had data that said otherwise. While working in Vienna General Hospital’s First Obstetrical Clinic, he noticed that mothers in a maternity clinic died far more frequently than in a second clinic. Dr. Semmelweis autopsied every dead mother to find the answer. It turns out that small particles of organic matter from corpses festered inside the mother’s bodies, contaminating them. Back then, the same doctors who delivered babies conducted autopsies. The doctors’ unwashed hands spread diseased remnants from cadavers onto new mothers. The solution: wash hands with chlorine before delivering babies.
These doctors tried it, and the death rate plummeted to nearly zero. Incredible! Even more incredibly, and tragically, nobody listened. It would be another century before the medical profession adopted handwashing as standard protocol. Highly educated, authoritative doctors had a hard time believing that their unclean hands were deadly. But Dr. Semmelweis also didn’t do himself any favors. He made no attempt to reconcile his findings with the four-humours theory of disease. And he went out of his way to attack doctors who rejected his thesis, devoting a full sixty-four pages of one of his publications to attack a single obstetrician from Prague who questioned his results.
Dr. Semmelweis assumed that data and strong arguments suffice to persuade the mistaken establishment. They don’t. You must also go out of your way to present your message in a nonthreatening way, regardless of how irate you feel. It’s really, really hard to argue from the position of a minority, since members of the majority scrutinize your arguments far more closely than those from majority members. When strongly identified members of a group view your message as a personal threat, even if your arguments are unassailable, many of them will stick even more intensely with the opinions and practices of elite, popular members of the group. In general, your window of influence shrinks when emotions such as fear, embarrassment, and guilt dominate over a sense of wonder and curiosity.
THE BIG IDEA
As a principled insubordinate, adopt a conciliatory approach and friendly tone. Don’t shame, blame, or maim status quo enthusiasts. View exponents of orthodoxy as your future allies.
PRINCIPLE 3: PROJECT AN AURA OF OBJECTIVITY
Whether we’re in the majority or not, all of us come across more persuasively when we make statements that appear objective and verifiable. Why do you think there’s so much science in this book? Creative experiments have confirmed that principled insubordinates in particular stand a better shot at influencing the mainstream when objectively verifiable facts exist.
In one study, researchers asked participants to pretend they were college admission officers tasked with evaluating new applications. Everyone received identical information about the applicants. Half of the admission officers learned that the decision to accept or reject was objective, based on hard data. Researchers told the other half that the decision was subjective, with a wide range of information requiring interpretation. Admission officers made their initial admission decisions privately before considering input from others in the group (one of many best practices to avoid groupthink).
Here’s the twist: researchers asked each officer to solicit a second opinion from another admission officer of their choice. They could seek a second opinion from an officer who agreed or disagreed with their viewpoint. When college admission officers thought decisions were subjective, they intentionally surrounded themselves with like-minded thinkers. If they believed admission decisions were objective, they sought out dissent, disagreement, and alternative perspectives that would offer a semblance of protection against biases.
As these results suggest, when a contention seems objectively based, we tend to open our minds to it, seeking out opportunities to grow, and entertaining opinions that deviate from our own. When it’s subjective, we close down. It’s not hard to understand why. When we hear a contention has evidence behind it, we feel motivated to learn more so as to avoid appearing unintelligent, irresponsible, or lazy, adopting what we might call a “prevention” or “defensive” mindset. We might also seek to learn about contradictory evidence because we aspire to get to the best answer, instead of merely seeking to minimize mistakes or errors—what scientists call a “promotion mindset.”
THE BIG IDEA
As a rebel, you’ll be far more likely to attract a receptive audience if listeners possess a promotion mindset. Support a promotion mindset in your listeners by clearly identifying when you’re providing evidence-based knowledge, and when you’re just stating an opinion. Go heavy on the objective knowledge and spin out for listeners how instead of holding on to mainstream ideas long past their expiration date, they might benefit from learning about a new, better way.
PRINCIPLE 4: PROJECT COURAGEOUS SELF-SACRIFICE
In prior chapters, we reflected on the serious risks rebels run in breaking with the status quo. Think back to the sorry fates of Darwin’s unfortunate predecessors, or the sense of shame that prompted Wilt Chamberlain to end his short experiment with underhand free throw shooting. The life of a rebel can truly suck. But there’s a plus side: when attempting to convince people that their ideas have merit, rebels can turn the psychological toll they suffer and the social dangers they face to their advantage.
THE BIG IDEA
We tend to find others more credible if they come across as heroic risk-takers. Rebels can alter perceptions by engaging in so-called courage-signaling, in which the personal sacrifices and costs for standing out from the crowd are made visible.
In experiments with criminal trial juries, researchers found that people in the minority who seem palpably uncomfortable speaking out but do so anyway can exert more influence. When a small number of jury members dissent and prevent a unanimous verdict, ridicule spewed by members of the majority boomerangs back to the dissenters’ advantage. Other members of the majority observe dissenters being (unfairly or excessively) disparaged, respect their courage, spend more time contemplating their views, and show a greater willingness to adopt their views.
One caveat: if the majority builds strong, compelling, evidence-based arguments, jury members find mainstream and dissenting views to be equally persuasive. But if majority jurors present flimsy arguments, the seemingly outmatched, impotent dissenters become increasingly persuasive. Why? Because jury members regard dissenters as more committed, sincere, and credible.
One more caveat: few people care about the difficulty of mustering the courage to speak if they perceive a dissenter as a naysaying asshole. So, don’t be a naysaying asshole! As a dissenter, when the majority has a good point, show solidarity with them. That way, you’ll build up niceness “credits” you can spend during some future argument, when you vehemently disagree.
Exposure to ridicule isn’t the only basis for bravery in others’ minds. Researchers found that audiences tend to view dissenters as more trustworthy if they pay a clear financial cost for expressing unconventional ideas. Audiences are surprised—in a good way—by a readiness to sacrifice and are then more receptive to implementing the dissenter’s proposal. Conversely, when members of a dissenting minority have palpable conflicts of interest, they lose credibility. Whistleblowers who might otherwise seem trustworthy lose traction if they stand to profit from, say, a lucrative book deal. Members of the majority understand this and will often seek to discredit critics by looking for anything smacking of hidden profits.
As a rebel, highlight the sacrifices you’re making (without going overboard, as that will backfire). Show your psychological vulnerability when speaking out. Say it aloud: “I feel seriously uncomfortable disagreeing.” Let people know that you lost sleep wondering whether to speak. If your viewpoints gain traction, avoid gloating or seeming elated and continue highlighting the very real sacrifices you are making. People understand how scary it is to publicly interrogate the status quo. Increase your own persuasive powers by candidly evoking the difficult journey you have undertaken.
