Social Media Lynching

There are more and more instances, most in the third world, of the internet and social media becoming the noose of modern day lynch mobs.  With cell phones as their latter day torches, groups blinded by hatred and egged on by virtual friends advance down the information highway with the single minded purpose of exacting their own brand of justice.  Their evidence is hearsay, their witnesses are biased and often imaginary and their motives are highly questionable, but all that becomes irrelevant in their rush to judgement and their lust for retribution.

Two innocent men (and their innocence or guilt should be irrelevant) were recently beaten and burned to death outside a police station in Mexico.  Their crime?  They were out-of-towners who had gotten into a disagreement with some locals and a scuffle had broken out.  A self styled social crusader had read something somewhere about child abductions (on a dubious source) and had gotten it into his head that these were the perps.  Facebook and Whatsapp started buzzing with rumour and innuendo and, quicker than you can say Alex Jones, a mob began to coalesce at the police station.  Bells were rung, shouts were carried from megaphones, and humanity, at its ugliest. did the rest.

From India to Brazil to Kenya to Poland, the same social media that brings you flash mobs to sing Handel's Hallelujah Chorus at a food court brings a howling, slathering mob of knife wielding, petrol splashing 'villagers' to the steps of a police station.  And we, like gaping idiots take in both scenes with slack jawed equanimity.  But then, aren't we all guilty of the vigilantism illustrated here?  Aren't we, in our own way, complicit in the orgy of self righteousness that social media has often descended to?

Public shaming, for example, is ubiquitous on Facebook and other forums.  Although far from causing death or serious injury, character assassination only leaves reputations and careers tattered and torn.  The transgressions which lead to a person being 'outed' on social media are also far less severe than the heinous acts attributed to those who are subsequently murdered by outraged citizens.  Most of them involve a lack of decorum or 'decency' rather than any overt crime.

How many of us have joined in the harassment of white women who call the police on people of colour?  How many of us have had a part in ruining careers and lives and relationships when invited, by someone we have never met, to add our voices to the howl for the blood of a transgressor caught on a cellphone camera acting badly?   It used to be that we muttered, "You're an asshole" when we encountered bullying or racism or misogyny but now we go for the throat.  Sound familiar?

I got caught up in the Jian Ghomeshi thing a while back.  I didn't take his side in the storm that raged around the allegations of sexual misconduct at the time but urged people not to rush to judgement.  It didn't matter that the courts later decided that his accusers didn't seem credible (it was a man's court after all some would say), the palpable outrage of the anti Ghomeshi side declared him guilty in the court of social media opinion.  For taking the side of reason and justice, I was branded a woman hater, a Ghomeshi apologist, and a closet abuser.  I was pilloried, unfriended and blocked.

I know that there are bad people out in the world who should be shown the error of their ways.  I know that men who beat their wives or people who abuse their children should be arrested and their victims sheltered from further transgression.  But publishing pictures of an old woman with a bloodied face above text that names her abuser is not what we do in a civilized society lest we bring about the extra judicial violence referred to above.  Are we going to encourage like for like?  Should the perpetrator be bloodied like his victim?  Shades of Hammurabi!

Our ascent into humanism and our descent into madness continues unchecked.  We have never known as much or understood as little about ourselves as is currently the case.  The internet has brought information to our awareness like never before, shown us the world, eliminated borders and restrictions and allowed us to share with others in times of tragedy or disaster.  But our darker natures will not disappear overnight and our tribal instincts, our fear, and our anger will continue to frustrate our evolution into the cohesive, actualizing society that socialists in particular envision.  Domage.