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The Harvard Program on Negotiation offers some sound advice,[1] with illustrations, of doing some intercultural work that can deëscalate violence or potential violence. For example, they note, one of the officers at the North Korean/South Korean DMZ routinely chats with his counterpart on the North Korea side on a hotline installed back in 1976. They talk about mundane matters that they slowly identified as of common interest, from baseball to whiskey. When they are talking, he said, they aren't shooting.
Sometimes the commonalities relate to the escalated behavior. At one Climate Strike Friday in Portland, Oregon, with thousands of kids in the streets demanding climate justice for their generation, a MAGA-type father was yelling, very escalated, apparently furious that the event was happening but using his daughter's presence there as his hook toward his rage. I was able to intercept him just as he was about to engage physically with a group of high school boys who looked quite prepared to fight him.
I interpositioned myself between them, facing the man and said, "Hi, how can I help?" He started making accusatory claims about his daughter missing school to engage in this frivolous day of skipping, claiming this was going to interfere with his goal of getting his daughter into an Ivy League school.
Rather than dismiss the obvious illogic of that, I focused on his role as a loving Dad. "I get it," I said. "I'm a Dad too. There are thousands of kids here. Do you want help finding your girl?"
He deëscalated, much to my relief and likely to the hidden relief of both the boys he was confronting and his own hidden relief at not being drawn into a knockdown brawl. We did find his daughter eventually and it broke my heart. She was 11 and was made up to look like a forest animal with painted whiskers and the sweetest little presence, with the makeup running because she was crying once she saw her father. I commented on how she looked so compassionate, trying to convince the father to let some of his daughter's best traits rub off on him. They left and I could only hope she'd be okay.
In the domestic US, there is no cultural group further from me than the Trump types, but when they share something with me, that's what I fasten on when trying to deëscalate them. There is no guarantee of success, of course, but debating them is a virtual guarantee of failure, so playing the odds is literally the best bet.
[1] https://www.pon.harvard.edu/daily/international-negotiation-daily/how-to-solve-intercultural-conflict/
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