WhatFinger


Mob has tasted blood, they may develop a hunger for more. When nobody has a private life and no accusation requires real proof, the mob could come after almost anybody

Mob Politics: The Hysterical Lynching of Donald Sterling



With all due apology to John Donne, ask not for whom the mob rages, they rage for thee. Billionaire sports-franchise owners don’t ordinarily deserve our sympathy, especially when they turn up in public with their mistresses (er, ‘girl-friends’) rather than their wives.
It does not help when the billionaire in question, Donald Sterling, also has generated legal cases about an earlier mistress. There have also been legal cases about discrimination in rental properties he owns, and substantiated allegations of racism in the past. About five minutes of perusing articles about Donald Sterling on the internet gives a fairly comprehensive picture of a very unlikeable man. Fair enough, we all have the right to be dislikeable, objectionable, and – within reasonable limits – obnoxious. We also have the right to take the consequences when we violate civil or criminal law. Could Sterling be described as a bigot, a slum-landlord, a philanderer, and a manipulative misanthrope? In the United States, these would be fair comments. Moreover, if he was guarded about his reputation, he would have been more careful about his private life. When his “girlfriend”, a poor working girl whose luxury cars and town-house may be imperiled as their affair winds up, has a conversation in which he chides her for bringing a ‘black man’ to one of his games, is it any wonder that the conversation was accidently-and-not-on-purpose recorded and somehow released to others?

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Of course, those with a nasty suspicious mind that care to listen to the whole 9.26 minute recording of banalities about race and identity might suspect that Sterling was invited by his ‘girlfriend’ to waltz in a political minefield with her. He was stupid enough to accept the dance even if he did not use the ‘N-word’ or any other pieces of insulting invective. Ever since humanity first urbanized, mob justice has been something to be feared. The ancient Athenians had a civilized approach to avoid too much gore in the gutters – ostracism. Somebody who proved unpopular could be voted into exile, a common fate for politicians who lost too much support. The Romans often did the same thing, but as the institutions of the Republic weakened in the last decades before the Caesars, blood spattered the forum all too often. In Medieval Cities, when the commons got angrily restless, it was often necessary for rulers to toss another set of victims out in public before their own homes got stormed and looted. Far too often over the centuries the Jews came in useful for this… even as late as 1905 in Russia when the Czar’s police feared for the stability of the regime and instigated pogroms instead. ‘Witches’ came in useful sometimes too. The French Revolutionaries were feared not for the primacy of their political ideals, but for the fact that the Revolution had unleashed the mob and shown all of Europe how dangerous an unrestrained mob could be. Sans-Culottes stormed the prisons in Paris and murdered ‘Aristos’ – mostly mix of petty criminals and religious prisoners. In Lyons, the same mob that rejected the National Convention in 1793 cheered the public mass murder of hundreds of prisoners in 1794. Working the people into hysteria and then discharging it is an old tactic. As Stalin’s terror loomed into sight in the 1930s, denunciations and accusations poured into the ears and hands of the NKVD. Saddam Hussein had himself filmed at a Ba’ath Party Congress where he announced details of a plot and had sundry victims dragged out for their execution. Within minutes the remainder of the delegates fell over themselves declaring their love for him. On the West Bank during the Second Intifada, many Palestinians would privately confess they hated Yasser Arafat for his corrupt incompetence but would never dare to publicly do so… lest they get denounced as an ‘Israeli Spy’ and be literally torn to bits by a mob intent on proving how much they loved Arafat too. Is Donald Sterling someone to be envied? Probably, he is a billionaire with mansions, luxury cars, and hot-looking girls on call despite being eighty years of age. Envy is a reasonably good trigger for a mob. Has Donald Sterling violated the accepted norms of society? It would seem that he did, and in today’s society, we must all expunge the taint of racism from ourselves -- unless, of course, one is Al Sharpton or someone of that ilk, in which case ‘reverse racism’ seems perfectly acceptable. Violating the current tenets of the group is a good trigger for a mob, especially when privilege and special exemptions make those tenets difficult to understand. Is action against the mob’s victim sustainable, permissible or even legal? It is always easier to bay for blood if one knows that it is an allowable context. Finding an unpleasant rich old man who has violated the tenets of society, and no bar to stripping him of property and rights… who could resist? The mob doesn’t need to have sustainable charges after all, everybody ‘knows’ that something is true. There is no need to find out if witches are really causing curses, if Trotskyite wreckers are sabotaging the factories, if the Aristos are plotting… act now! There was a disturbingly self-satisfied and sanctimonious attitude among the players and fans at the last Clippers game. It is matched by approval of the action taken by advertisers and the National Basketball Association. Rough justice had been swiftly done, virtue was triumphant, and evil was punished even if nobody really knew the details. The mob has been more virtual than real, nobody was butchered in the streets or hung up from a lamp post… so it all looks good. Herein lies the problem: The mob has tasted blood. If the past is anything to go by, they may develop a hunger for more. Now, when nobody has a private life and no accusation requires real proof, the mob could come after almost anybody. Ask not for whom the mob rages, they rage for thee.


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