Published on 2017-08-15
It's really hard to watch the news unfold lately. I find the Charlottesville protests (is it too soon to call them hate groups/crimes?) absolutely abhorrent. I've talked about the right to privacy on the internet, but in cases like these, it's entirely different: your right to bigoted, racist beliefs ends when you pick up a sign, gather publicly, or otherwise impinge on the rights of others. In short, it's the Act that is censured, not the belief. And when it comes to speaking publicly, that includes Twitter/Facebook.
We tend to dismiss the harsh words of an outgroup because "they are not us," and rely more on what we see with our own ingroups. If we don't see someone in our group being an asshole, and our ingroup doesn't confirm it, we tend to not believe it. That impulse has served us well for most of our history, minimizing enemy propaganda efforts and promoting group cohesion, but this resistance to turning on one's own also gives some measure of protection to the deviants of any social group: as long as they don't deviate around their ingroup, they have more freedom to deviate among those outside it.
During my studies in sociology, we reviewed the case of two groups of teenagers in a small town: the skaters and the prep-boys. The skaters were seen as a nuisance and deviants by the townspeople because they would hang around parks, occasionally vandalize a business or part of their school, and would "exhibit deviant behavior" as teenagers often do. On the other hand, the prep-boys were seen as "good kids" by the townspeople, despite causing more damage and vandalism. What was the difference? The "good kids" had cars and so would drive to another town, isolating their vandalism to a place 30-plus minutes away, before returning home. There was no difference in the group members except that one had the means to travel and be relatively anonymous, while the other did not.
This ability to be anonymous is also not new in society, as one could always manage to travel when motivated, but temporary anonymity only came about during the Boomer generation with cheap cars and nationwide infrastructure. When considered together, participating in a protest hundreds or thousands of miles away seems like a relatively anonymous activity. One might think "what happens here stays here" i.e. nothing I do abroad will affect my life at home, so I can do what I want and not suffer the long term consequences. Thanks to the ubiquity of cellphones-with-cameras and the rapid propagation of information on social media networks, deviant behavior anywhere is no longer an anonymous activity.
Having lived in small(er) towns for most of my childhood and young-adult life, I know very well how disruptive, invasive, and anxiety-inducing it can be when everyone you see knows your business. You have to be constantly aware of the group mindset, policing your words and actions accordingly, or your livelihood is gone. What simultaneously scares and excites me is that this small-town mindset is now becoming a reality for the entire nation.
White supremacy and other antisocial, intolerable mindsets are being exposed because Trump and his administration have emboldened them. They now feel that they don't have to hide. That's not reality, and the fact that these people are being identified and fired is evidence of that. As powerful as this activity is, it's also the definition of "tyranny of the masses." In this case, I argue its actions are morally and socially just -- they are attacking those who are breaking the social contract of tolerance -- but when this mechanism doesn't have a ready-made target on which to focus, it can (and likely will) go devastatingly wrong. Unchecked, people who have merely different views will be subject to the same scrutiny and pressure as those who have completely antisocial views, and their lives will be ruined just as badly. A great deal of self-control will be needed and, thankfully, I see that already affecting subsequent identification activities. It seems the "masses" are only so vicious because of the subject, and it is awe-inspiring.
At best, this "rise of white supremacy" should be seen as an extinction burst, a final gasp as society purges the groups which actively violate the social contract before turning to a socially-enforced state of progressive liberalism. This is my hope and dream. The next question will be whether or not our elections will bear out a change of seats for our legislature in the midterms.
Eugene Volokh wrote an article about the limitations of employers, and specifically how employees can't be fired for acting politically outside of work (in some states): Can private employers fire employees for going to a white supremacist rally?
For those who don't have a subscription, here's a PDF.