While I wait, along with the rest of the world, for Trump to be indicted twice more, I have been idly thinking about something that has struck me as odd ever since January 6th. I am curious whether others have found it odd as well.
Many of the rioters who gathered at the Capitol, broke in, and proceeded to do everything in their power to interrupt the peaceful transfer of authority, took selfies of themselves which they then posted on social media. It was these posts that enabled the Justice Department to identify them, charge them with various crimes, bring them to trial, obtain their conviction, and send them to jail.
These were not by and large ignorant or stupid people. Many
of them were lawyers, police officials, elected officials, and retired officers
from the military. And yet they engaged in what can only be thought of is
stupidly self-defeating behavior. They seem to have acted as though they
thought they were playing a computer game or were part of some online fantasy
activity. I am not really sure, but it is not my impression that those
relatively small numbers of people who used the Black Lives Matter
demonstrations as an excuse for illegal activity behaved this way.
There is something that was at one and the same time
politically dangerous and fecklessly unrealistic about what was, after all, an
attempt to overthrow the government of the United States.
I cannot figure out whether to be reassured by this fact or
frightened by it but it really is different from political protests of previous
eras.
9 comments:
Several comments: first you have to have a theory of mind for these people not derived by the preconceptions of your theory. You've taken a first step.
I can give you an example. There's a cop in my library and all he talks about is sports and how the little guy loses when the Yankees spend all that money for a losing team. People, regular people feel gypped by America and Trump, who though not an intellectual recognizes that- he's a fighter for them for a regular people- he's like the American flag for them and he has charisma this magic quality to him that he can make miracles happen.
Why do intelligent people believe him? For the same reason that intelligent people, you'd say buy into false consciousness- they just know the facts of this world and though they're intelligent they might be less worldly than educated people used to be and they just sense that everything is a joke- that's a posture taken by some "intelligent' people.
Nothing systematic here- but what puzzles you hardly surprises me-
Maybe they were just sure they'd succeed, in which case they presumably wouldn't be seen as criminals but heroes. Whenever I've been part of a demonstration there's been a very optimistic atmosphere (even in cases where we all went home knowing that we didn't have much of an effect, and the cause was likely lost).
Another possibility is related to something I've thought about Q-anon and related communities for a long time. I think one reason a lot of people believe conspiracy theories is that their understanding of what it is to *believe* something is quite thin. Most conspiracy theorizing happens online, the consequences of being right/wrong or convincing/unconvincing to your peers in the online forum are negligible, and the extent to which you're taking on commitments or responsibilities when you endorse a belief is minimal. It really is like taking on a character in a game or in fantasy role-playing: spending in-game currency, taking a certain stance as a character, or whatever, are easy to do because they aren't connected to all the consequences and implications those actions have in real life. Having a belief just isn't connected to, e.g., explaining and justifying it to your neighbors, making predictions based on it and acting on those predictions, needing to make those predictions convincing to people who disagree with you so that they'll act too, etc.
So, sometimes when people believe ridiculous things, it's not because they've brought themselves to the usual level of conviction it takes to endorse something like "the election was stolen" or "Clinton was running a pedophile ring out of a pizza place." It's because their 'beliefs' are so detached from all the usual consequences and implications that it becomes easy to say those things: all the mechanisms that make you take your beliefs seriously, and keep you from going too far off the rails, are missing.
Anyways, I suspect something like that is behind the prevalence of online conspiracy-theorizing like in Q-anon. And since it seems to be those Q-anon groups that were involved in Jan 6, I wonder if the detached/disconnected/fantasy role-playing nature of their community was able to carry over, for at least a few folks, into the real-life riot. In that case, the consequences of posting selfies and etc. wouldn't occur to them, any more than the consequences of seriously holding some belief would occur to them when they post it on their online forum.
Along with the rest of the world? How American of you.
A bit comical to think that what happened on January the 6th was literally an attempt to overthrow a government, too. A bit like all the silly references to actual fascism.
Anonymous - It was unquestionably an attempt to overturn or nullify the results of an election by force.
Psychology of the masses.
People will take risks when they're members of large masses which they will never take if alone. They show off, compete with each other in risky behavior and that is increased if,
as in this case, they feel sure of the absolute righteousness of their cause.
I don't know if that occurred in the Black Lives Matter demonstrations, but I've seen the same phenomenon in many leftwing protest marches.
"These were not by and large ignorant or stupid people. Many of them were lawyers, police officials, elected officials, and retired officers from the military." [there were also active duty military]
There are plenty of ignorant, stupid, (and evil) people in those occupations. There were also organized cadres who bussed folks to D.C. and who led the charge. If we start with the assumption that folks prone to internalizing kayfabe are weak minded and easily led then we have a sort of layered sieve and the folks who fall out the bottom wind up following the cadres into the Capitol.
Don’t be silly, LFC. It was a riot and nothing more, not an actual attempt to overrule anything.
"We must make an example of the Conspirators or France will fall..."
"Long live the Emperor!!!"
--See Thanksgiving 2023 movie trailer here:
https://www.google.com/search?gs_ssp=eJzj4tVP1zc0zE0qNMkrLzc0YPTiy0ssyM9Jzc9TyM0vy0wFAJwECmU&q=napoleon+movie&oq=&aqs=chrome.1.35i39i362j46i39i362j35i39i362l6j46i39i175i199i362j69i59i450j0i3i66i143i308i362l5.-1j0j7&client=ms-android-verizon&sourceid=chrome-mobile&ie=UTF-8#fpstate=ive&vld=cid:6e281806,vid:CBmWztLPp9c
Anon, the plan seems to have been to have those cadres in the Secret Service spirit Pence off to some undisclosed location (probably Andrews) for his "safety" and have Grassley take his place. Grassley would then enact the Eastman plan. That's presumably why Pence refused to get in the car.
What I found most interesting was the instant reality check with the howling mob when Babbitt was shot. I would guess that had the CP simply used their sidearms at the beginning (14 X 4 X 5) there would have been the same result with the usual suspects crying hard times afterwards.
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