The Authoritarian Impulse of the Masses
Among the more inconvenient truths confronting self-rule’s exponents lies the demos’ innate vulnerability to authoritarian capture fueled by umbrage or panic. Hidden beneath democratic ideals persists an atavistic impulse toward tribal order and enforced conformity. Under perceived threats to stability, the yearning for security subordinates liberty’s costly responsibilities before reason reasserts the equilibrium.
This authoritarian reflex echoes throughout history, from an Athenian crowd swayed by demagogues into disastrous military adventures abroad to McCarthyist majorities scapegoating dissent in the name of national purity. One year later, the same mob ruling the Paris barricades welcomes Bonaparte’s cavalry, trampling the very freedoms so jubilantly won. Revolutionary ideals bow before jingo calls to restore lost grandeur through fresh expansionist wars.
If anything, the vulnerability to volatile populist tides and would-be strongmen seems augmented in modern democracies. In the past, pragmatic monarchs resisted unbalanced policies as invitations for rival states to exploit instability. But electoral competition creates perverse incentives for leaders to inflame currents of anger or prejudice that overwhelm counter-balances. The impulse to fan fears, shift blame, and corral bias into minorities waiting to be milked gains tactical advantage even when it is ruinous to civil stability or state power.
Why do the demos slide so readily into absolutism it decries in sobered moments? Perhaps populism’s common traits provide clues. Most notably, its ultranationalist exaltation of tribal unity encourages suspicion toward dissenting perspectives as disloyalty or foreign infection entering the body politic. Moreover, its reflexive anti-intellectualism tamps messy realities into melodramatic morality, pitting the volk's noble defenders against parasitical subversives and alien interlopers.
The insecure collective ego finds relief in casting pluralism's inherent conflicts as a cosmic battle against cabals that must be purged to restore virtues projected onto idealized historical memory. The ominous other offers a shadow vessel into which discouraged supporters project and thereby exorcise their own denied doubts and frustrations to forge solidarity with a simplistic reaction that is more righteous in proportion to the embedded cost. Beleaguered believers self-lionize through imagined persecution, which only partially cloaks longings to enforce fealty from less fervent neighbours. Alien conspiracies explain away complex disappointments no domestic reforms or soul-searching could cleanly resolve.
The demagogue plays tempter from this baseline, whipping uncertainty toward perceived enemies and promising scapegoat relief. His bold voice channels forbidden thoughts held silently by newly receptive crowds. Taboo notions yesterday shunned gain-installed defenders relishing permission to target muted doubts upon designated culprits opposite. Resentments nurtured in shadowed recesses gain amplified voice steered toward thirsted vengeance. The big lie's soft murmurs crescendo into operatic vilification, sanctifying suppressed prejudice through tribal absolution skillfully conferred.
In this light, the tyrant profiles less as an anomaly tearing healthy social fabric than as a manifestation of pathology long-present but discreetly masked beneath surface proprieties. His success owes less to importing alien poisons than to expertly fermenting anger and hate lying latent within his flock. Skilled propagandists awaken more than seduce the masses. They mobilize toward unbalanced ends.
The demagogue rarely appears unless conditions already lean toward demoralization and pending unrest. Instead, he capitalizes upon an ambient race to the bottom in public discourse, wallowing in reaction to forces seemingly beyond control. His talent for spotlighting humiliations and offering enemies upon whom to pin them taps into instincts awaiting this dark permission to coalesce around a shared scapegoat.
He franchises moral fury against phantom enemies by subtly sanctioning vengeance, absolving and unleashing crowds through false narratives. Reactionism claims sanction to target nebulous threats from secular modernity's ceaseless disruptions upon fixed status arrangements. The mob transfers doubts about unjust privilege into threats requiring forceful protection by strong hands unbound by procedures prone to question.
Thus, populism debases democracy by equating legitimacy with fervour. Zealous majoritarianism rises in place of reasonable pluralism crafted through compromise, delegitimizing dissenters and disagreement. Its absolutist notion of mandate by acclamation displaces the concept of representative rule balancing interests in sustainable equilibrium.
The tragedy springs less from acts by sinister individuals than from the masses who applaud rough justice upon named traitors. Here, the cautionary tale warns no system stands immune to base instincts empowered by multitudes. Beyond black-and-white morality, gray complexities demand nuanced governance that is not easily reduced to gut simplicity. Civil stability relies on leaders channelling visceral tides rather than surrendering the state's helm to tempest whims. When vocal extremes crowdsource reactionary policies or candidates for short-term catharsis, the resulting cycles often culminate in authoritarian rule legitimized by impassioned mobs who demand order be restored at the cost of balanced liberty.
The authoritarian temptation is thus double-edged. It arises from the vehemence of aggrieved patriots as much as from the cunning demagogues who bewitch their prejudices into useful weaponry. Tyranny is invited by acclaim as much as imposed through hostile takeover against cold indifference or sheets of popular objection. Its triumphant rise relies on rallying support from allied factions fully embracing the strongman's communicable vision of exclusionary belonging, not just reluctantly acquiescing to the raw imposition of alien will.
From this perspective, fascism springs not from assault by outsiders upon unwilling victims but from insider abandonment of pluralist equilibrium for monistic authority promising security at the cost of complexity and conscience. It erupts when multiplying factions disdain accommodation while claiming a sole mandate, thus necessitating force to quell contradictory preconceptions of the righteous order. In the demagogue’s twisted vision lie seeds of this downward spiral abetted by the masses who applaud his harvesting their darkest inherited hatreds and hopes.
Chapter 5: When the People Themselves Become Tyrants
Points to Remember
- Majorities often embrace authoritarianism in times of uncertainty
- Demagogues exploit mass insecurity, vengeance and anti-intellectualism
- Populism reflects latent societal pathologies more than alien import
What you can do:
- Defend pluralism and minority voices
- Question calls to concentrate power
- Beware of scapegoating vulnerable groups
