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T H E E AG L E - T H E P U P I L S ’ P O L I T I C S M AG A Z I N E
T H E E AG L E - T H E P U P I L S ’ P O L I T I C S M AG A Z I N E
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f o s i s y l a n a e h t s e o d Why
y g o l o h c y s p d w o cr ? s c i t i l o p matter in Eleanor Wilson –
ucester
Lower Sixth, Glo
Donald Trump’s presidency began with an argument over a simple number. The New York Times posted the number of people at his inauguration as being only a third of that of Obama’s, which sparked a great emotional reaction from Trump, including various Twitter rants. The White House secretary at the time, Sean Spicer, accused the media of seeking to ‘minimise the enormous support’ which Trump had managed to win in his election victory. Sean Spicer also lied about the number at the inauguration, stating that it was ‘the biggest audience ever’, leading to simplistic emotions of the crowd, which then in turn leads to the most primitive forms of expression. Deindividuation theory is largely based on the ideas of Gustave Le Bon and argues that in typical crowd situations, factors such as anonymity, group unity, and arousal can weaken personal controls (e.g. guilt, shame, self-evaluating behaviour) by distancing people from their personal identities and reducing their concern for social evaluation. This lack of restraint increases individual sensitivity to the environment and lessens rational forethought, which can lead to antisocial behaviour.
Crowds serve to unlock the unconscious mind, and that in a crowd, the moral centre of consciousness is displaced by a larger crowd and is replaced by a charismatic group leader.
More recent theories have stated that deindividuation hinges upon a person being unable, due to a situation, to have strong awareness of their self as an object of attention. This lack of attention frees the individual from the necessity of normal social behavior. This means that for instance, one could be deindividuated as a KKK member, which would lead to higher levels of unacceptable behaviour, and therefore, greater levels of social decay. This explains why crowds can be so powerful, as individuality is forgone, and anonymity is placed at the forefront, it leads to a sense of there being a ‘safety net’ and a mob mentality that politicians can use to their advantage. To further this, we as human beings are so heavily dependent on social cues, that a crowd can be a very effective way of convincing someone of a view. Research has shown that people tend to trust the opinion of a large group, whether it comes from a liberal or a conservative. Essentially, as a crowd is such a compact group of people, with social cues being displayed every second, the infiltration of an opinion becomes very rapid, as the effect of social cues snowballs. Freud also suggests that crowds serve to unlock the unconscious mind, and that in a crowd, the moral centre of consciousness is displaced by a larger crowd and is replaced by a charismatic group leader. Moscovici hypothesised that this effect was extremely powerful in relation to political indoctrination, and that autocratic leaders such as Joseph Stalin and Mao Zedong used the utilisation of crowds in this way in order to effectively maintain their cult of personality. Some argue that where politics becomes infused by the logic of crowds, it becomes less about peaceful political representation, and more about mobilisation, and who can mobilise the most people. Crowds matter to politicians as they represent a profound depth of feeling that comes with having so many people in one place at one time. Essentially, crowds allow people to become a part of something that is so much larger than themselves. This needn’t be a bad thing, but it certainly does carry risks.
