Sunday, March 09, 2025
Elder of Ziyon
Suter identifies six factors that contribute to the increased aggression of online users compared to how they act in the real world. Some of them apply to the wearing of masks in public, meaning that the same factors that have been studied for two decades that increase hostility and aggression online are being transferred to the physical world by the widespread use of masks in these protests, ostensibly for health (face masks) or solidarity (keffiyehs) reasons.
The major factor Suter found is the dissociative anonymity:
Anonymity is one of the principle factors that creates the disinhibition effect. When people have the opportunity to separate their actions online from their in-person lifestyle and identity, they feel less vulnerable about self-disclosing and acting out. Whatever they say or do can’t be directly linked to the rest of their lives. In a process of dissociation, they don’t have to own their behavior by acknowledging it within the full context of an integrated online/offline identity. The online self becomes a compartmentalized self. In the case of expressed hostilities or other deviant actions, the person can avert responsibility for those behaviors, almost as if superego restrictions and moral cognitive processes have been temporarily suspended from the online psyche.
This is exactly what happens when people use masks in public. The anonymity encourages more aggressive behavior than they would do when they are identifiable.
Indeed, as we have seen many times over the past year, those wearing masks tend to be the ones who are more likely to engage in bullying behavior, vandalism and violence.
There is a question of cause and effect - some of the instigators no doubt planned to do criminal behavior and the masks are a tool to avoid prosecution - but the very act of masking, which is insisted upon by many of the organizing protest groups, are meant to minimize inhibitions in the larger groups.
Other factors Suter identifies also have analogues in real world protests. For example, he describes dissociative imagination:
If we combine the opportunity to easily escape or dissociate from what happens online with the psychological process of creating imaginary characters, we get a somewhat different force that magnifies disinhibition. Consciously or unconsciously, people may feel that the imaginary characters they “created” exist in a different space, that one’s online persona along with the online others live in an make-believe dimension, separate and apart from the demands and responsibilities of the real world. They split or dissociate online fiction from offline fact. Emily Finch, an author and criminal lawyer who studies identity theft in cyberspace, has suggested that some people see their online life as a kind of game with rules and norms that don’t apply to everyday living (E. Finch, unpublished observations, 2002). Once they turn off the computer and return to their daily routine, they believe they can leave behind that game and their game identity. They relinquish their responsible for what happens in a make-believe play world that has nothing to do with reality.
Wearing keffiyehs and masks allows participants to more easily acquire mob mentality, mindlessly following their leaders without thinking for themselves. This is a part of the behaviors we see including mindless chant/responses, which I maintain is a mild form of hypnotism. Repeating slogans or phrases like “From the river to the sea…” creates a mantra-like effect, similar to how hypnotic suggestions are reinforced.
This imperfectly but compellingly fits in with another of Suter's online attributes: solipsistic introjection.
Absent face-to-face cues combined with text communication can alter self-boundaries. People may feel that their mind has merged with the mind of the online companion. Reading another person’s message might be experienced as a voice within one’s head, as if that person’s psychological presence and influence have been assimilated or introjected into one’s psyche.
I believe that the chants have the same function of directly fomenting groupthink.
Later studies show how online anonymity fosters bullying behaviors. Another influential paper, "Bullying in the digital age: a critical review and meta-analysis of cyberbullying research among youth" (Kowalski et. al, 2014) says:
Perpetrators of cyberbullying often perceive themselves to be anonymous. Research on deindividuation (Diener, 1980; Postmes & Spears, 1998) shows that people will say and do things anonymously that they would not say or do in face-to-face interactions. This anonymity significantly opens up the pool of potential perpetrators of cyberbullying, compared to traditional bullying.
This applies as well to masked bullies who physically bar Jewish students from parts of campus, for example.
The entire point of these protests is deindividuation. Everyone must act as one, and anyone who deviates from the official line is outcast. Many protesters refuse to answer questions because they are not equipped with the basic knowledge of their own cause, so they defer to the leaders. I suggest that pro-Israel protests have very few chants and far more speeches than anti-Zionist protests for this very reason: the pro-Israel participants want to think for themselves and hear ideas, while the anti-Israel crowd wants to be led without thought. The crowds and anonymity from covering their faces allows them to engage in cult-like behavior, where they can be led to do things they would not consider if they were on their own.
The masks add a dimension beyond mindless following into encouraging aggressive and criminal activities. It is no accident that the people most likely to cover their faces in their rallies are the "progressive" Left - and white supremacists.
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"He's an Anti-Zionist Too!" cartoon book (December 2024) PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022) |
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