OPINION

BRADLEY R. GITZ: Bullies, mobs and cowards

At the risk of trying to use a form of simplistic psychobabble to explain tragic events, I have always felt that many of the worst tyrants in history were the equivalent of playground bullies who later acquired the power to terrorize not just dozens but millions (or, conversely, were abused by bullies and later sought their revenge upon the world that had treated them so badly).

Having now read dozens of biographies of the likes of Lenin, Hitler, Stalin, and Mao, the common thread seems to be a chilling lack of empathy for any of the millions they so blithely murdered in the name of this or that cause.

These were people who loved humanity but hated people--mass murder was not simply an unfortunate consequence of their designs (the broken eggs necessary to make the omelet), but the primary goal of it all.

This "bully" view of tyranny is useful because it allows us to explain not just Pol Pot's Year Zero and Robespierre's Reign of Terror, but also smaller-scale cases of political thuggery, including the kind of bullies that now take to the Internet to intimidate and denounce and demand that others recant or else.

Little blood might actually be spilled through such terror campaigns (thus far) but the impulses are remarkably similar and, just as Internet mobs have now become real street mobs bent on violence, online purges of would-be heretics can, if unchecked, become real ones.

Only the naïve would conclude that the kinds of bullies who take pleasure in using social media to destroy reputations and careers will be content to stop with just destroying reputations and careers or that those now decapitating statues won't begin to look for more mobile victims to satisfy their hatred.

The problem with such interpretations of history comes in recognizing that the bully/tyrant can only accomplish so much on his own; mass murder generally requires a large number of accomplices.

Ideology has always helped some in this regard because it can provide an idealistic gloss and sense of purpose with which to attract mass followings (what Daniel Goldhagen famously called "Hitler's willing executioners"), but the hunch is that most of those who have enlisted in the murderous political crusades of the past (or joined the increasingly radicalized, potentially murderous ones of the present) have ultimately had little understanding of the ideological particulars upon which they were based.

The people who these days pull down statues of Abraham Lincoln or U.S. Grant in the name of combating racism testify to a certain lack of both mental firepower and ideological sophistication.

At best, then, ideological frameworks (including today's all-consuming ideology of "anti-racism") probably matter less for their specific content than for the way in which they provide a sense of moral superiority and enhanced social status for acolytes; hence the endless "virtue signaling" and continuing competition to see who can be the most "woke."

No, if the primary motive for the bullies is the desire to acquire self-importance by crushing others, the primary motive for joining the mobs led by the bullies isn't sincere ideological conviction or even desire for social status, but the twin enduring propellants of cowardice and conformity.

Fear leads to conformity (obedience) because we are afraid of the consequences of doing otherwise (and the ideological veneer actually allows us to apply a less humiliating twist to our conformity, since waving a placard that says "fight racism" is preferable to having to stamp "I am a coward" on our foreheads).

Fear can lead us to refrain from saying things we believe and to say lots of things we don't, and to grovel and beg forgiveness if we inadvertently said something we shouldn't have. The range of topics we cannot talk about thus grows larger at the same time the arguments we can make regarding the fewer topics we can talk about grows smaller.

Silence is now complicity, deviation from the narrative now forbidden, and we must not just speak, but speak in precisely the way demanded or risk punishment.

The mob, led by the bullies, now increasingly dominates our politics, in large part because ordinary people are afraid that if they resist it might turn on them next and because the best way to avoid becoming the quarry of the mob is to become part of it, and stay that way.

Our generation's bullies possess power only because of the mobs they lead, but it is fear and cowardice that makes the mob.

Most people don't like what they see happening around them, what is happening to the country they love, to its traditions and institutions and icons, but most people also know that if they criticize any of it they will quickly be called racist, with the mere threat of that accusation exerting the ultimate chilling effect on dissent.

Indeed, the entire hard-left project, with its long-standing goal of overthrowing the American founding and its principles, is now being aggressively wrapped in the guise of anti-racism because doing so effectively eliminates any opposition and compels assent (however insincere).

So be sure to plant that "Black Lives Matter" sign in your yard before your neighbors plant theirs.

And watch to see whose yard doesn't have one.

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Freelance columnist Bradley R. Gitz, who lives and teaches in Batesville, received his Ph.D. in political science from the University of Illinois.

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