How Social Media Fuels The Frustration Behind Historically Toxic Mass Movements
Why those struggling with today are manipulated to destroy the present, and what to do about it
We’re entering a strange phase of history. While the ability to speak your mind and project your thoughts across the world has never been easier, there’s an equal and opposite desire to silence those whose speech isn’t “appropriate.”
The internet-derived tool of social media has amplified both.
You don’t have to look hard to find examples of an errant social media post resulting in a mob of fanatical attacks until the speaker either:
Begs for forgiveness.
Crawls in a figurative hole and disappears until the mob moves on to someone else.
There’s even an old word from history that applies nicely to this process: “defenestration.”
This term means to throw someone out of a window. It originated from the “Defenestration of Prague” in 1618 when Lutherans threw a few Catholic Lords out of a third-story window when the Church demanded the sect stop building churches on royal land.
It turns out this wasn’t a unique behavior for the time. People in that region had been throwing those with undesirable opinions out of the windows for a long time before this. And we continue the practice today, but our mob tosses them out of the community's windows.
However, the interconnectedness of the web can cause some to lose their jobs and even others to have their bank accounts shut down and credit cards turned off. In a way, social media mobs can come with a religious fervor that seems strange in our present era.
But it’s not strange. This behavior is quite familiar and just a modern iteration of many mass movements that have defined the past few hundred years. I didn’t quite catch it until I read Eric Hoffer’s 1951 book The True Believer: Thoughts on the Nature of Mass Movements.
Hoffer isn’t the traditional buttoned-up academic philosopher. He was a longshoreman and migrant worker that read prolifically while laboring with his hands.
It gave him a unique perspective on the movements he lived through personally: Nazism, Communism, and nationalism. Moreover, his breakdown of their movements clarifies what we’re seeing today in vivid detail, and it’s not what you think.
The driver of the movement isn’t the dim-witted buffoon. It’s more likely to be the frustrated intellectual or failed artist, and it doesn’t take many of them.
The Power Of The Creative And Intelligent Frustrated Masses
“It is small wonder that under the circumstances, many academics and journalists take a dim view…they see more perils than opportunity in the new economy, and communicate their gloom and disenchantment to their readers and students. It is never good policy to starve the poets.”
— Walter Russel Mead, American Crisis
Hoffer points out that the ideal drivers and members of mass movements are those who are frustrated with the world. He says this collection usually comprises unappreciated intellectuals, misfits, failed creatives, the bored, those overwhelmed with choice, and the incompetently selfish.
He says, “The game of history is usually played by the best and the worst over the heads of the majority in the middle.” So, it’s an odd small combination of the intelligent, those who don’t fit in or can’t make it, and unsatisfied creatives.
The movement gives them all a place and a “holy cause.” According to Hoffer:
“To the frustrated, a mass movement offers substitutes either for the whole self or for the elements which make life bearable, and which they cannot evoke out of their individual resources.”
So, they substitute their individual wants, which can’t be quenched anyway, for the fruits of the movement. And this has a solid appeal to the creatives. Peter Cohen, writer of Architecture of Doom, says, “Failed artists were characteristic of the leadership of the Third Reich.”
Hitler was a failed painter: his applications to The Academy of Fine Arts Vienna were rejected twice.
Nazi propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels wrote plays, poems, and a novel.
Baldur Von Schirach penned poetry while heading the Hitler Youth.
Alfred Rosenberg who held many Nazi posts loved to paint, and desired to write a book.
Hugo Boss was also a Nazi member, that manufactured their fashionable uniforms. Furthermore, the well-known designer Paolo Garretto designed uniforms for Benito Mussolini’s cadre.
And speaking of Mussolini, while he took on the appearance of an ignorant bull-headed doofus, he was very well-read, digesting Immanuel Kant, Benedict de Spinoza, Peter Kropotkin, Friedrich Nietzsche, G.W.F. Hegel, Karl Kautsky, and Georges Sorel.
He was also a schoolteacher and became a newspaper editor, increasing their readership dramatically. But the fascists weren’t the only ones with artistic passions. The Soviets developed their style of art called Socialist Realism.
According to the Encyclopedia Britannica, it grew out of Russian art’s realism that “purports to be a faithful and objective mirror of life.” However, Socialist Realism depicts an idealized mirror of life that polishes the imperfections of the holy system.
While on the surface, Communism, Fascism, nationalism, and various movements with radical fervor may look different, in many ways, they’re the same. Namely, they aim to destroy the present.
The Destruction Of The Present And The Holy Cause
“Not only does a mass movement depict the present as mean and miserable, it deliberately makes it so…It views ordinary enjoyment as trivial, or even discreditable, and represents the pursuit of personal happiness as immoral.”
— Eric Hoffer, The True Believer: Thoughts on the Nature of Mass Movements.
Part of the allure of the mass movement is its unpracticalness. Offering anything practical would put value in the present, so the mass movement offers up a glimmering future of magnificent possibilities that are near fiction due to their total separation from the current world and reality.
Hoffer says, “Though ours is a godless age, it is the very opposite of irreligious,” which lends itself to the devotion towards the movement.
This “religion-fiction” of the fictional future drives the follower towards self-sacrifice. After all, by sacrificing yourself, you’re only forgoing the present, which is an immoral trash heap anyway.
So, the movement liberates the incompetent, bored, and overwhelmed with “freedom from freedom” by choosing and thinking for them. It also removes their “unwanted self” and gives them a target for their inner pain.
Hoffer quotes Thoreau as saying those with inner pain — either physical, mental or otherwise — attempt to fix it by “reforming the world.” Then, Hoffer reminds us:
“A man is likely to mind his own business when it is worth minding. When it is not, he takes his mind off his own meaningless affairs, by minding other people’s business…In running away from ourselves, we either fall on our neighbor’s shoulder, or fly at his throat.”
Hence, you have the social media mobs demonstrating religious-like devotion in their defenestration of heretics who dare to challenge the cherished ideal. The platforms’ simplicity of use makes it all the easier. But the virtual world can equally spin off into real-world mobs rioting, too.
The members of the movement see or are led to see themselves as part of a mass drama, “marching forward with drums beating” to destroy the wicked present.
And the “drama” format makes sense when you realize how many artists and intellectuals get involved. Plus, you can understand the hatred of the present. Logically, a “pleasant existence blinds us to the possibilities of drastic change.” So, the present cannot be allowed to be pleasant.
With all this in mind, what’s the solution?
How To Approach The Toxic Mass Movement
Hoffer doesn’t have a perfect answer but does give us some help. He explains those “ripe for a mass movement…are usually ripe for any effective movement.” Not only this, but they tend to bounce around.
For instance, Benito Mussolini was originally an ardent Marxist before he became an equally fervent Fascist, and many Nazi followers were once Communists. So, you can identify toxic mass movements by the following:
They have ardent followers who were likely ardent followers of another equally demanding movement.
The group never offers practical solutions. They only offer a glorious and hard-to-reach future, which often promotes only more frustration.
They demonize the present, likely the past, as well.
However, Hoffer adds one bit of caution. The tomato and the nightshade are very similar, but the former is nutritious, while the latter poisonous. In other words, not all movements are destructive.
Creating a meaningful life, career, relationships, and hobbies is the best way to inoculate yourself from the toxic mass movement. Moreover, invite others to join. This may involve joining a practical organization with reachable goals like the following:
A charity that can display meaningful results.
A club, sports team, martial art, or organization that makes you and those around you personally better.
A religious or spiritual organization that creates a virtuous community to work together and help its members.
Once meaning can be found in the present, you and those around you are less likely to fall victim to the drama of a mass movement. Hopefully, defenestration will become an artifact of the past as well.
-Originally posted on Medium 12/18/23