I would like to thank Rochelle Terman for her generous and perceptive review. I am going to be charitable toward myself and assume that the constructive tone of the criticisms does not reflect some underlying reluctance to shame.

Terman wisely asks about the limits of shame as both an analytical tool and something that can be manipulated for political purposes. I certainly see the danger of a shame-centered analysis that attributes great explanatory power to shame and shamelessness and forgets other important factors. Shame is only one of many emotions shaping politics, after all. And then there are political and material interests.

I have spent much of my academic career trying to document the political and economic functions of disasters. I believe that these “benefits” help to explain why disasters happen. So I certainly would not want to ignore the role of interests. Yet, the role of emotion in disasters—and in politics—is something that also cannot be ignored. And shame is one of the most important.

Very often, extreme violence—from atrocities in civil wars to the Nazi Holocaust—tends to defy explanation when we focus on its political and economic functions. There is an important element of irrationality, in this sense. At the same time, it would be unwise to retreat into the position that such catastrophes cannot be explained—unwise, not least, because that stance leaves us clueless about prevention.

In looking at how shame and interests interact, I have been repeatedly reminded of the frequency with which the political functions of violence depend on some kind of invocation of shame by politicians manipulating disasters. I am also interested in the way economic exploitation contributes to perverse distributions of shame, a process that plays no small part in legitimizing exploitation. While all of these processes are complicated, what does seem clear—and here I emphasize the value of Terman’s book—is that rather than reifying either emotions or interests, we need to understand better how they interact.

To come now to Terman’s more specific points, she asks: when is political manipulation of shame effective and when is it ineffective? While my answer is only tentative, I would say that a lot depends on the existence or absence of a deep reservoir of shame within a particular society, the presence or absence of a leader with an instinct for tapping into it, and the presence or absence of a sense of national crisis or defeat.

Terman takes up my argument that leaders are sometimes stoking the shame that they simultaneously promise to relieve, and she points out that this may even create an incentive to behave badly (so as to stoke up the shaming and the shame that a conspicuously shameless leader may thrive on). This interesting point pushes at the edges of my thinking rather than simply summing it up, and I can certainly see that this perverse incentive may operate. Terman and I are strongly in agreement that the political mobilization of shaming often makes opponents’ attempts to shame feel counterproductive. Indeed, many are counterproductive.

Terman also asks “does it matter whether those who perceive themselves as victims are actually victims?” I certainly think it does matter, and perhaps I should have addressed this more explicitly. Today, we are seeing a strong backlash against longstanding attempts by many disadvantaged and oppressed groups to free themselves from shame and move toward pride; indeed, many find themselves being shamed for trying to escape shame! This is indeed very different from shame-around-weakness that frequently informs the actions of an abusive leader—from Eichmann to Trump to Putin.

So far, so comfortable for the US Democrats. But one thing that liberals are sometimes insufficiently aware of, in my view, is their own attraction toward shaming others—all too often an enjoyable expression of superiority and prejudice. Such shaming, which often shades into humiliation, feeds off good causes like “fighting for democracy.” But it has frequently fed into violence—and continues to do so. Liberal shaming of various kinds has become a valuable political resource for the current right-wing populist backlash and even for Putin. We are left with dangerous individuals whose sympathy for themselves and their nations—and whose sense of themselves as victims—is constantly reinforced by those who proclaim themselves to be their “enemies”.