Years ago, I used to teach a course about folk devils. You know, those friend-of-a-friend type stories, which everyone knows and some even believe. The stories which lead entire nations to believe myth-information and falsehoods. A kind of collective, cultural ideology which somehow turns into general belief.
Folk Devils are closely related to “moral panics” in their pervasiveness and insidiousness. They fester, develop, re-form and then grow almost autonomically. In the end, we don't even realize what they are, they just become universal truths which are universally acknowledged, oft repeated, and seem to become more definite with each re-telling.
The best example of a folk devil/moral panic was the mods and rockers debacle in the United Kingdom in the 60's. In fact, Stan Cohen based much of his book “Folk Devils and Moral Panics” (30th annivesary reprint edition), around this very thing. The public were fired up to believe there was a war between two groups of young people. The idea was constantly and forcefully reinforced by the mainstream media every hour of every day, with emergency update bulletins being issued and public order laws being passed with alarming knee-jerkiness which, its interesting to note, was unheard of then, quite common nowadays as a response to public order issues. The public, although a little disinterested at first, soon got on the bandwagon and joined in. It became the national topic to discuss. Who was right and who was wrong? Who was better – the mods or the rockers? Who was more violent? What was it all about? Reality was no one really knew and no one particularly cared; it was an almost entirely media-created drama and we were all happy to go along for the ride. Yes, it's true to say there were some pre-existent issues between local groups of youngsters, but nowhere near to being a crisis of any type. However, once it became “public fact”, the mods and rockers were happy enough to join in and fulfill the fictional creation of warring factions. It ended up as a very real scenario, with real people being really hurt. And that's the scary thing about it. It was so easy. It's just a case of “wind 'em up and watch 'em go”. Simple.
In many ways, the folk devils debate was, for a few decades subsequent to the 60's, seen as an era-related thing, something to be discussed in academic institutions and studied by people like me who probably had nothing better to do. However, in the last few years, we've seen an increasing shift towards the creation of new moral panics, new folk devils and new groups of people to be scared of, or people to just hate, plain and simple. This is what we used to call the “them” and “us” story. “They” are bad people and “we” are not. Therefore we can judge “them” and put all of our fears onto them without any sense of responsibility or guilt. They're just bad, so what does it matter?
Well, it does matter. Very much indeed. And when you mix this type of news reporting with a utopian concept like “hope”, then you really are in trouble. And there is no better example of the chaos and disappointment that this recipe can create than the Presidency of Barack Obama.
Obama who was elected on a refrain of near tidal-wave “hope”, could never really live up to our expectations. It didn't really matter how amazing he was, he was always going to fall below the expectations we had put onto him. Because our expectations were not realistic. That didn't stop us from believing they were achievable! And yet we are now surprized that, for many of us, he didn't live up to our fairy-tale notions of perfection.
We are now at a cross-roads, I've argued long and hard against the current bipartisan, duplicitous system of politics which seems to trap us all. Back to that “them” and “us” thing, the things which divide us rather than the things which cohese us. It creates a breeding ground for hatred and fear. Fear your neighbors, they are probably up to something. Fear anyone who isn't just like you, they are definitely up to something. Fear the bankers, they are greedy pigs. Fear the police, they are unfair and judgemental. Fear the Right Wing, they are fascists. Fear the Left Wing, they are socialists. Fear the anarchists because they are … well, maybe the anarchists are ok!
When we allow certain ideologies to form our entire way of thinking, we are essentially handing over our capacity for free thinking. We may not realize it, but we are. I remember thinking, just after 9/11, that the word terrorism would wear a Middle Eastern face for a very long time to come subsequent to that horrific day. Little did I know then, just how right I was.
A British documentary attempted a very interesting experiment in the 1990's. They created fake newspaper front pages and went around the UK, asking people if they found them offensive. In a nutshell, they had taken actual headlines, involving the words “Moslem” or “Islam” and replaced those words with the word “black”. It showed, in a horribly stark way, just how openly racist and unacceptable some of these headlines were. People were predictably outraged by the fake headlines, many thought they were probably illegal and few believed they had really been printed. They were right, they hadn't. Not in that form anyway. And the interviewers then produced the original front pages (the real ones this time, with the words “Muslim” or “Islam” reinserted) and demonstrated in a very skilful way, just how easy it is to miss racism and prejudice, and to mistake it for “news” when we allow ourselves to get caught up in the fast train of lies and myth-information which the mainsream media are all too willing to create for us.
It's not even a new experiment. It owes its ideology to the “Brown Eyes/Blue Eyes” experiment conducted in 1968 by Jane Elliot and it also owes a debt to the Milgram electric shock experiments (1963) (See “Will People Do Anything If Ordered?”) - both of these original ideas have formed the basis for a plethora of subseqent research studies. They're really about the same thing : obedience to perceived authority and our ability to take part in “bystander apathy”, the thing which allows us to feel ok about doing nothing in certain situations, the same thing which allows us to believe “well, everyone else believes it, so it must be true”. The concept came out of the dreadful murder of Kitty Genovese in New York in 1963, a woman who was murdered outside her apartment block in Queen's, New York. Her cries for help were heard by 38 of her neighbors but none went to assist her as each believed that someone else would “do something” if something needed to be done, since it was clear that everyone could hear her screams. Sadly, no one did anything, and Kitty Genovese, a 28 year old woman, was murdered while everyone sat indoors and pretended not to notice.
The same argument holds true for the gun debates which always follow dreadful random shootings such as those which happened recently inAurora, Colorado and Oak Creek, Wisconsin . Yes, we certainly do need to have a grown-up and sensible discussion about controlling gun accessibility, but this debate simply allows us to avoid looking at the real issue : that of the disenfranchisement and exclusion felt by so many members of our society. Thankfully, most of us don't demonstrate our despair by going out and shooting people, but it's all really just points on a scale. There will be more shootings, unless we get to grips with what is happening to our society. Unless we begin to take back control of our own locales and communities. The disgruntled ten year old, who hangs about street corners or throws stones from bridges at cars passing underneath, is tomorrow's random shooter. We need to take notice of the excluded and outcast ten year old, we need to find ways to bring him or her into our society, if we are ever to prevent that child from growing up into our worst nightmare. It is the responsbility of all of us, not just the chosen few and until we accept this and understand it, things aren't going to change.
Point being, we're all fantastically good at “not noticing” things. And yet we don't view ourselves in that way. We seem to believe we are engaged and thinking people. People who want answers, people who want “things done”. Most of all, we want change. And yet, it is us who mostly prevent this change from happening by jumping on those of us who dare to stand up and say “hey, they're all as bad as each other, what choices do we really have here?”
Those of us on the left of the political divide have thrown our hands up in horror as we've watched the so-called “birthers” demand to see our President's birth certificate. If it wasn't so awful, it really would be comical. Or, at least, it should be. But it's not. And yet, we need to stop and ask ourselves, how has a climate evolved where it's ok to ask such things? When did this happen? And where were we all looking at the time? Same goes for Wall Street : we can opine on how greedy and bad they all are, criminal indeed. And yet, did we really not know this a very long time ago? Was it really such a surprize that the people at the top were screwing us? Surely not. But we seem to have made a national pasttime of averting our eyes. Going with the flow. Happy to take out loans, over-extend ourselves, desperate for what little comfort we could find. Don't misunderstand me, I am just as guilty as anyone else, maybe more so. I was teaching the Dominant Ideology Thesis when today's young people weren't even a twinkle in their parents eyes, and yet I somehow missed it. Or, at the very least, I chose to avoid confronting the uncomfortable truth.
I think the politicians trying to woo votes from us realized long ago, that their main focus should be to appeal to our endemic apathy. Our willingness for someone to be right, our desire for someone else to take charge and solve it all. And that's the dream we placed onto Barack Obama. Get rid of Guatanamo, not in five years, now. Get rid of unnecessary defense spending, not at some point in the future, now. Of course Obama won't sign the NDDA, not a chance … well, ok, he did!
I wrote quite a lot after the passing of the NDAA (see “Wake Up America (NDAA)”) and I was loudly and widely challenged for daring to criticize President Obama. I was told I was in some way ruining his chances of re-election. Yes, it was fine for me to think these things, but preferably privately where no one could hear me. Because, if I did so publicly, then it naturally followed that the “bad guys” would be elected. And no one wanted that. It's a false premise you know. It always has been. It's just a continuation of Michael Moore's theory, the one which says “control people by fear”. Religion has done this very successfully for years, centuries in fact. It says “don't do this, do that. Don't approve of those people, approve of these instead. Don't allow this , allow that instead” and people seem to accept it. And that's their right of course. It's the right of each of us to choose what we believe in. But, with the responsibility of choice comes also the responsibility of thought. Doesn't it?
I wrote another article a few months back about the duplicitous nature of our electoral system (See “Will 2012 See The End Of Du(o)plicity?”). This endless Right V Left saga. The one which prevents from ever really moving forward. It stultifies us and prevents change. Totally.
Because, while we are all merrily tweeting and demanding to see Mitt Romney's tax returns, or asking ourselves how on earth Michelle Bachmann ever got elected, or challenging the Obots who will see no wrong in President Obama, we are all missing the point. The Constitution has been trampled on, Guantanamo is still open, the banks are still calling the shots, we are still losing our houses and our jobs. We are still here and they are still there. And now we are sleep-walking our way to more of the same come November and election time. We are yet again, averting our eyes from the real issues and focussing on the petty, side issues of “right” and “left” of “personalities”. None of our current problems are about any of these things. The current problems have come about because, for far too long, we have let others control us, we have been happily led up several garden paths into a huge, deep abyss and now we're all suffering the consequences. Sure, the bankers, the politicians, the greedy organizations are to blame for many of our woes, but don't make the mistake of believing you are innocent in all of this. You are not. None of us are.
We need to wake up, and fast, because we are currently sleep-walking our way to disaster.
I don't really like quoting those old sayings as we all know them anyway, but since this one still seems so salient, let's just repeat it here in the hope that someone might read it anew :
“Those who fail to learn from the mistakes of their predecessors are destined to repeat them” (2)
And, who will be to blame in four years time when whoever gets elected in November has messed it all up again? Not us, that's for sure.
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(1) I've searched to find a link to this documentary and I believe that it came from this particular series but am willing to be corrected if anyone else can find a direct link to the particular programme I refer to.
(2) George Santayana : The Life of Reason Vol I Reason and Common Sense (1905/6)