'Bedlam' - A Social Psychologist's Commentary On Minneapolis, ICE, Antifa, And 'Collective Hysteria'

Robert Anson Wright is Professor Emeritus at a prestigious eastern university, Associate Dean (Emeritus) of the medical school, former Editor-in-Chief of Forensic Psychology, a leading academic journal, and hired by the Randall Corporation, a major Washington think tank, as an analyst of the recent events in Minnesota - the violent anti-ICE protests and their aftermath. 

Wright had long been an observer of modern progressivism, its 'feral' and viral nature, and its Orwellian inspiration. In an article written in 2021 in The Eastern Economist he voiced his concern about the perfect storm of progressive politics - utopian idealism, true belief, and a culture of righteousness combined to create ‘a dangerous mentality that threatened 'the integrity of logic’.

The article made the Randall Corporation, considering a major study on radical progressivism, think twice about hiring Wright. It might be perceived as biased, but after consultation with its professional membership, known for its comprehensive approach to social issues which looked through the lens of the social and behavioral sciences as well as through the more traditional economic, financial, and political ones, it agreed that Wright was the right choice. 

The Corporation was more concerned over a telling and potentially incendiary article written in 2022 in The Journal Of Political Economics in which Wright said: ‘The American Left is navigating dangerous waters.  Its  revisionism, historical idealism, and profound hatred of 'the idolatry of individualism is an example of political overreach and an attack on heartland patriotism.  True belief, as Eric Hoffer noted, is “the corruption of the simple mind”’.

But the Committee Chairman, himself also a social psychologist, found no bias in Wright's writing, only a reasonable contribution to his basic assumption - the political Left had veered away from the temperate, albeit passionate liberal philosophy of LaFollette, Gompers, and Brandeis, and rode into uncharted territory, one which had more to do with collective groupthink than rational political opposition. 

'What's going on in Minneapolis?', the Chairman asked doing Wright's final interview.  'Take a good look and don't be shy.  This is not political protest, it is bedlam'. 

An appropriate description, thought Wright, for it really did seem like the demonstrations had gone beyond sanity - closeup photographs of the frontline of protestors, their faces contorted, maniacally twisted, their mouths gaping, choking with rage, a very picture of the inner, most secure wards at St. Elizabeth's, one of the nation's last 'centers of internment for good mental health', in truth a replica of England's Bedlam, a howling, wild, bestial place for the incurably insane. 

This is what he was after - the demented psychology of the protestors, not their political motivation, handlers, or intent.  There was something that had snapped in the body politic, turned protest into inchoate rage.  Even in the days of the Vietnam War when student protests rocked the nation, there was a collective purpose, a clear political intent, and a communal desire to right a bad wrong. 

 'Hey, hey, LBJ, how many kids have you killed today?' was the era's meme, a sense of moral rectitude expressed by millions. 

The anti-ICE protests in Minneapolis had none of this central, moral core.  It was clearly mass hysteria, not a term to be used lightly, but one described in the academic press.  This excerpt is from the pages of the June 1994 edition of The American Journal of Behavioral Psychology:

The phenomenon of group hysteria is not new.  Cases from the 18th century of hundreds of school children coming down with the same imaginary illness are well documented.  It took only one child mildly ill but within overall concerns about an epidemic in another county, to encourage this universal sickness. 

Such group hysteria can be seen social behavior as well.  The case of Ronald Evans, slated for the guillotine at Old Bailey is illustrative.  Evans, a petty criminal in the wrong place and the wrong time was imprisoned, and because of the prison's macabre history, it was assumed by family and friends that he was to be executed.The very idea of bloody decapitation, the hooded executioner, the sharp blade of the guillotine, and the instantaneous loss of life was abhorrent in and of itself, so it took only the presumption of state murder to send crowds into a hysterical fervor. 

Evans was released after a week, smiling and dopey looking but in one piece - a case of mistaken identity - but the crowds only assumed that their protests had worked, and without further notice, disbanded. 

Wright began his research under traditionally controlled procedures.  His random sample, his methodology, his approach were all according to Hoyle, irreproachable and honest.  What most surprised him was not the hysterical anger of his respondents, but the naive presumptions of right and wrong.  

This was no Sixties protest on the National Mall where the deaths of thousands of Vietnamese civilians, the burning of villages, the routine savagery of American troops unhinged from moral protocol by the threat of an unseen enemy, were fact, and compelling reasons to stop the war. 

No, the Minneapolis protests were founded on one thing and one thing only - a spiteful hatred borne of nothing more than irrevocably naive assumptions.  It mattered not why the federal agents had been deployed in Minneapolis, only that they had been sent by Donald Trump, a man the protestors believed was an autocratic, racist, interloper out to destroy America, cleanse it of black and brown people, make it his own empire of greed, arrogance, and power. 

Given this assumption, there was no reason to assess the cause and effect of letting millions of undocumented migrants into the United States without vetting, proper procedure, or caution; or whether rampant crime was due to the endemic dysfunctionality of the black community, idealistic indifference of local politicians who ran on platforms of inclusivity and diversity, or cultures of entitlement. 

The protestors in the Sixties had purpose - to pass a Civil Rights Bill to end segregation and discrimination; and to stop the War in Vietnam.  Those in Minneapolis have none, only classically hysterical belief.  Professor Wright wrote:

Many in today's fractured America reject the term 'hysteria', not only because it unfairly casts doubt on what is a legitimate political movement, but because of the origin of the word derived from the Greek hystera "womb," from PIE *udtero-, variant of *udero- "abdomen, womb, stomach".  Originally defined as a neurotic condition peculiar to women and thought to be caused by a dysfunction of the uterus.

While there may be some ironic truth to these politically motivated claims - many if not most of the Minneapolis protestors are fevered hysterical women - one should stick with the modern adaptation of the term - unhinged collective antisocial behavior. 

 

Of course when excerpts of Professor Wright's research were leaked to the press, the outcry was...hysterical.  In a typical comment on The Daily Kos Facebook page, one angry reader said:

To be expected from a privileged, white male, writing from his ivory tower, protected in his bastions of racial security, a prick in the guise of a journalist, a vapid, irrelevant racist, a moron, a man who lives on lies, fabrications, and innuendo.  A disgrace, a cunt, a bottom-feeding muthafucka...

The Randall Corporation was noncommittal, recondite at least until the firestorm died down.  Wright turned his research into a series of lectures at The Cato Institute on 'Orwellian Groupthink Or Simply Insanity - The Hysterical Nature of Protest' in which he was finally able to loosen his academic ties and be far more expressive than he could within a university setting. 

 

'The inmates have left the asylum', he began one bright Thursday morning, finished to a round of sustained applause and an invitation to return.