The Economist included a neat short essay this week about mobs. It included some ancient history, starting with the ancient Greeks and moving through the French and American revolutions. One basic message was that it is too easy for us to become complacent about mobs and the dangers they pose.
We should always start and end at a personal level. When we watch the ugly scenes at the US Capitol, our first tendency is to label the perpetrators as people not like us. Surely I could never do anything so reprehensible?
Indeed, I can’t see myself in a MAGA hat or supporting QAnon. I could not join that mob. But it is sobering to realise that there are other mobs I could easily join. The Trump crowd like to conflate their insurrection with the BLM protests during 2019. Their argument in terms of the cause is threadbare, but in terms of the mob behaviour, they have a point. Protests in Portland and elsewhere did turn violent and threatening. There were several Sunday mornings we drove through Manhattan to observe the after-effects of destructive riots.
Ah, we say, complacently, that misses the point. Even if we proclaim that violence is not acceptable, even when history shows that violence against blacks has been ever-present and that only violence has led to change, we should recognise that the violence was only committed by a tiny minority in what were otherwise peaceful protests, that the police and infiltrators were probably inciting it, and that tiny minority could never include me.
Well, I confess, actually it could. I did not join any BLM protest in 2019 (I wish I had), but if I had, I might have joined in the violence. I reach this conclusion based on experiences from my past.
The nearest parallel for me was regularly attending live soccer matches at West Ham, a poor suburb on East London, during the 1980’s. I always chose to join the crowd standing in the cheap part of the ground behind the goal, not to save money and certainly not for the view (I always prayed the action was at my end, because I sure could not see much at the other end), but for the atmosphere. We chanted, we swayed, and we reached peaks of ecstasy and anger. We belonged to the tribe.
As an experience, it was wonderful. But looking back on it, I very easily became part of a mob, and could easily have been swept into reprehensible mob behaviour. Hurling racist and hurtful chants at opposition players and referees was bad enough, but often after the game the crowd on Green Street would swell and become threatening, and I could easily have joined in. It does not take a lot to become part of a mob – a situation, some adrenaline, and a desire to belong to a tribe.
A sports crowd is the nearest parallel, but others come close. I could too easily become a bully at school, and perhaps in adulthood too at work. That is not crowd violence, but it has many similarities. When we sit on our intellectual high horses, we should all remember our most tribal moments.
Going back to the more comfortable arena of The Economist, risk of mob rule has long been seen as the dark side of democracy. Democracy offers some power to the people, indeed it demands that the people to an active role. What if the people do not do a good job? What if our majoritarian, angry, mob tendencies come to the fore?
Our attitude to this dilemma often comes down to whether we have an optimistic or pessimistic tendency. Optimists tend to believe that our better natures, combined with improving education and knowledge and fair institutions, will avoid bad outcomes most of the time, and enable the fastest rate of progress. Pessimists argue for more controls, either because they fear the risks of mob rule, or they don’t trust themselves or (more often) others to get things right, preferring instead to rely on elites (often people like them).
I have always been an optimist in this question. For me, progress is the most important thing, so maximising creative potential and education is more important than avoiding risking control. I see the balance as a race, with education and technology and communication constantly raising the bar, usually fast enough to smother the downside risks. Even the rapid rise of China has not changed my fundamental philosophy, impressive though that rise has been and seems set to continue.
But those risks are present, and perhaps now are growing too quickly for education to outpace them. Communication allows for diversity and learning, but also for fear and tribalism, gives a ready voice to populists and plenty of ammunition and airtime to conspiracy theorists and resentments. And three quarters of a century without war might have led us into entitlement and complacency. We should cheer that many of the old control valves have been displaced – religion, class and national propaganda don’t work as reliably as they once did. But it does create more potential virality for mobs. We have to learn how to dampen these risks, especially the new media landscape.
However, The Economist makes another excellent point. Social media and rapid communication can form a breeding ground for mobs, but a well-run democracy can usually stop the mob at source by generating a positive narrative of its own, based on fair, incremental progress. And this narrative has become weaker since around 1980.
We can argue that Reagan and Thatcher started a process that led to the capture of US and UK democracies by a rent-seeking elite, one that has only becoming greedier over time. When one faction loses all pretence of seeking incremental fair progress, it is no wonder that the institutions start to break down and eventually that this faction itself can be captured by fanatics.
If this analysis is even partly correct, the dominant priority of democrats everywhere has to be to restore its commitment to fair, incremental progress. That would involve renewed focus on education, a more progressive stance on taxation, and a leg up for those people and places left behind. There is scope to debate the balance between a more socialist stance and a traditional conservative one emphasising reward for endeavour. But when much of the debate is swallowed by bigotry and resentment as a masquerade behind greed and rent seeking, we cannot be surprised if the result is an unleashed mob.
The Economist concludes its essay with an uncharacteristically blunt statement that democratic naivety died on January 6thin Washington. It calls for a more sophisticated democracy, defending institutions and respecting the imperative to deliver fair progress. I found this a compelling message. I am as susceptible to joining a mob as anybody else. We need to collectively remember how to nurture our better instincts, and quickly.
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