During this period of lockdown there has been much speculation in the media as to whether we will enter a period of civil unrest. There have already been protests concerning social distancing, and the need to re-open the economy, and some have interpreted these as signals of future mass civil disobedience, and possibly social unrest, etc. As unemployment checks and relief payments fail to come through, and with many foodstuffs running out, it is easy to see some of the reasons why society might breakdown and how we might enter a period of civil unrest, etc. Past natural disasters have seen spikes in criminality, such as during Hurricane Rita in 2005, where some took advantage of Houston’s mandatory evacuation order to commit burglaries and auto-theft, as home and property owners left the city, however civil unrest involves crowds and groups of people rather than individuals, committing crimes, and this makes it a very different beast to both understand and predict. Unfortunately, there is still much misunderstanding as to how crowds and “mobs” function, at all levels of society, and it is easy for us to conclude that with every upset to society and potential disaster we are on the brink of civil unrest and anarchy, with mobs roaming and ruling the streets, etc.
It is only very recently that we’ve started to properly understand the psychology of crowds and riots, with certain outdated ideas and theories continuing to be perpetuated and remaining extremely pervasive. In response to the 2011 riots in England, the Justice Minister, Kenneth Clarke, blamed a “Feral Underclass” as being responsible for them, and headlines such as “Guerilla Warfare Erupts as No One Knows Where The Mob Will Strike Next” (Daily Telegraph, 2011) were common, not only in the Tabloid Press but in the Broadsheets as well. The Prime Minster at the time stated that in dealing with the riots, in terms of options, “nothing should be off the table”. These are all responses that share a lot in common with those that were made during and after the 1848, riots and revolutions in Europe, where “Classical Crowd” theory was developed, and still holds sway today, influencing both public policy and police responses to crowd disturbances and rioting. The first thing to note about the study of crowds, mobs and riots both today and in the 19th Century, is that they are extremely hard to study from a scientific perspective i.e. you can’t recreate them in a laboratory setting and it’s impossible to interview every member after an event (and of course recollections of said event, can’t always be relied on to be both accurate and truthful) etc. The theories of Taine and LeBon – two privileged, aristocratic French anti-Semites, speculating about the causes of rioting in 19th Century France – which underly our classical understanding of mobs and riots, were developed without any interaction or interviews with those involved in the protests and riots. Both believed in a hierarchical view of society, with the aristocracy at the top and the working class at the bottom; both believed this was a reflection of evolution, not simply tradition. Their view was that this lower class, was actually a sub-class, of base people who if left unchecked would engage in barbaric practices on a daily basis i.e. a “Feral Underclass” – rioting by a mob was simply a collective expression of this that needed to be responded to with absolute force (“Nothing should be off the table”). LeBon’s theory was received especially well, by a scared and frightened upper class (“No One Knows Where the Mob will Strike Next”), who wanted a scientific response to mobs and rioting.
LeBon put forward three mechanisms that are at play during crowd violence: Firstly, that when somebody joins a crowd/mob they lose all individual identity, Secondly that the crowd becomes unable to criticize or reason ideas, which allows for contagion of bad ideas, and thirdly that whilst in a crowd the members are in a “Hypnotic State”, unable to act as individuals. Unlike Taine, LeBon believed that such crowds could be influenced in more positive directions, something that inspired both Hitler and Mussolini’s mass rallies. The common belief that both Taine and LeBon shared was that the individual loses their identity to the group, and that both the members of the group, and the group itself loses all rationality and reason i.e. it becomes a completely out of control entity, that simply destroys everything in its path, etc., with the only effective response to be an absolute show of force by the authorities – both Taine and LeBon were outraged, privileged onlookers, whose position was potentially threatened and needed to be protected by a strong show of force. Neither Taine or LeBon, believed the context of the disorder was important or even relative - mobs were mobs - and the reasons/grievances behind their actions weren’t relevant in understanding their behavior(s); understanding is not the same as justifying. Recent research has shown that context is everything in understanding crowd control e.g. local police forces dealing with issues that affect the local communities they police, at the local level, are much better at preventing violence, than non-local police forces that are brought in to swell numbers (who don’t necessarily understand the context of the grievance) etc. Also, in studying riots, it can be seen that individuals do retain a sense of self, and can behave independently of “the group” e.g. during the Toxteth Riots of 1981 in Liverpool, rioters evacuated an old people’s home that caught on fire, and were also selective in the buildings that they targeted for looting and arson i.e. the mob is not mindless. The supposed anonymity of the crowd doesn’t prevent the normal functioning of the self.
For such civil unrest to occur, two conditions need to be met. There must be a suppressed population with a common unifying grievance, and an inability of the authorities to maintain law and order. Importantly, there must also be a “Flashpoint”, a triggering event, that causes people to engage in civil unrest; and when they do it’s not a feral underclass, acting mindlessly, but a group coming together around a shared and common grievance. A commonality during many periods of civil unrest is rumors and the inadvertent sharing of misinformation e.g. there may be rumors that curfews are going to be set, that the army will be called in, and/or that the police will be using live rounds or water cannons, etc. This is sometimes not helped by politicians and law-enforcement officials making statements that “nothing should be off the table”, as such comments can add to the speculation and rumor mill, that is often present during such acts of civil unrest. Whilst epidemics have resulted in localized acts of civil unrest e.g. during the 2015 Ebola crisis eight aid workers and journalists were killed by villagers believing them to be responsible for the spread of the disease; in 2015 villagers in Zhejiang province stormed and ransacked government offices in response to policies regarding the SARS outbreak, etc., this is not common – largely due to the fact that “everybody” rather than a specific group is affected by such epidemics. If it becomes apparent that a particular group, is suffering more than another, and a flashpoint event occurs, then civil unrest during the Covid-19 epidemic may occur; however at the moment despite policing numbers being effected by the virus (1/6th the NYPD are out due to the virus), there are still enough officers on the ground to maintain law and order.
To properly understand why civil unrest occurs, we must first appreciate that many of the theories which are currently used are out of date, and unscientific – LeBon’s theories gained ground largely because he created a lexicon of technical jargon, with terms such as “Group Think”, however none of his thoughts or ideas were subjected to any scientific process. Knowing that people don’t give up their identities when joining a group, but instead unify around commonalities tell us that civil unrest is based on some degree of consciousness and rationality; something which is useful in preventing incidents as well as managing them. Ultimately context is everything, and certain conditions need to be met, for civil unrest to occur and if these ae absent than it is unlikely that there will be a breakdown in law and order.