Sowing the seeds of violent discontent

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 07/01/2022 (1553 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

HANNAH Arendt, perhaps the most pre-eminent political philosopher of the 20th century, spent the bulk of her life writing a postscript to the Holocaust. Having escaped Nazi Germany and emigrated to the United States, she tried to unravel the conditions that resulted in the rise of Nazism.

One of her main contributions is the coining of the phrase mass society, a state of affairs which, in her view, provided the perfect breeding ground for popular extremism leading to totalitarianism.

Mass society, according to Arendt, appears in some rather familiar forms: anti-government rhetoric and resistance couched in perverted claims to personal freedom and/or nationalism; mob mentality laced with racism and fabricated enemies; conspiracy theories and anti-intellectualism; and tyranny and violence fuelled by tyrannical ambitions.

It results from groups of a deeply disenchanted and aggrieved populace joining together, in spite of their irreconcilable differences, to speak with one anti-establishment voice seeking power for the sake of absolute control. Sound familiar?

Some of today’s self-serving politicians, particularly true of the majority of the U.S. Republican Party, which tolerates — even embraces — the most vile and virulent critics of the government they are part of, serve as example of the influence of mass society on democratic politics.

They join the many others who proclaim suspicion of governments’ intentions to the point of openly flouting the law, advocating refusal to vote and overturning elections, and supporting insurrection and vigilantism. With that, they also become collaborators in a warped politics, rallying under one banner the defiant mobs of islamophobes, white supremacists, conspiracy theorists, anti-vaxxers, paralegal militias and the like, which in combination create an enduring threat to any hope of societal cohesion.

Holding nothing else in common than their unflinching loyalty to former president Donald Trump, their extreme partisan political ideology or their lust for undermining legitimate governmental authority, they wreak havoc on their fellow citizens. Their automatic, intransigent and sometimes violent opposition to a variety of issues — including climate change, abortion, critical race theory and pandemic restrictions — are deliberate attempts to break the rule of law.

Along with an ever-growing number of private militias, they pose a major threat to American democracy.

Despicably, with the support of partisan political operatives, mobs hold their country’s constitutions and institutions hostage – Senate, Congress, state legislatures and the courts – to justify insurrection and encourage violence. They revise electoral boundaries and voting rights to disenfranchise citizens, publicly engage in hate speech and racism, use privacy-rights rhetoric to practice deceit and threaten others, contradict scientific truths and plead the Second Amendment to justify possession of lethal weapons. The list goes on, with reckless abandon.

Collectively hiving themselves off from truth, reason, reasonableness and inclusion, they, as with one voice and opinion, adhere to deliberately scripted adversarial and acrimonious monologues, clinging to ever-changing misinformation from the most obscure sources.

Today’s mobs drown out the civil public dialogue and valid moral disagreements so necessary to democracy, meanwhile proposing the most outrageous actions, such as vigilantism, to force acquiescence.

It’s scary to acknowledge that this largely American phenomenon, with its anti-government platforms, has found its way into the People’s Party of Canada and the fledgling Keystone Party of Manitoba. Like their disgruntled American counterparts, they exaggerate their discontents, drawing much of their support from “evangelical” Christians, meanwhile calling for obstruction and defiance, unfettered individual choice, relaxed gun laws and opposition to pandemic restrictions.

And just like the American masses, they are strategizing to manipulate politicians and infiltrate politics.

In Manitoba, the mob of anti-government anti-vaxxers denies irrefutable evidence that vaccinations reduce deaths, while not accepting any responsibility for prolonging the pandemic or denying urgent health research and care to others. Defying government decrees, they justify illegal secret gatherings in the names of personal privacy and freedom, and rationalize threats of physical harm to health-care professionals, religious leaders and their families.

More frightening, they are quite willing to force their views, and the consequences of those biases, on everyone else while our government of the day tolerates and indulges them – even in its own ranks.

It is one thing to critique the actions of governments of any and all stripes on any and all issues; in fact, it is our responsibility as citizens to do so. It is quite another to undermine the very idea of government and the rule of law, and to use that antagonism to excuse deliberate deceit, bigotry and violence.

It’s hard to imagine this can end well. We, and our politicians, need to step up before it’s too late.

John R. Wiens is dean emeritus at the faculty of education, University of Manitoba. A lifelong educator, he has served as a teacher, counsellor, work education co-ordinator, principal, school superintendent and university professor.