By Igor Ahmetov
The so-called “herd instinct” is often discussed by psychologists as one of the factors of confrontation between different groups of people.
Often, the influence of the crowd on a person manifests itself at various kinds of rallies, when an individual went out on the street not because he really has some complaints against local or state authorities, but because others decided to do so. This is especially active in terms of so-called mass mailings, including cases where very young people are attracted to participate in protest actions through various messengers.
When journalists ask schoolchildren participating in the protests what demands they made on the streets and squares, they cannot formulate 9 out of 10 their claims to the authorities. The reason is simple – there are often no objective claims. Unless, something general and streamlined in the style of “for all good against all bad”.
The fact is that young people who go to such events, in this situation, are not perceived by the organizers as a carrier of their own opinion. This opinion of those who sent out thousands of “invitations” to protest actions via Internet resources and mobile phones is not interested at all. The organizers need a mass of people, a crowd that can eventually be manipulated.
The negative in this case is obvious. Schoolchildren become hostages of those who try to promote their political ambitions, including through violation of the law. And always in this case, you can expect that young people will take advantage of provocateurs who find themselves in the crowd not by chance.
Usually, the heralds-provocateurs are physically strong young people with loud voices, who at a certain stage of the protest action begin to attract the attention of a close circle of people in order to identify themselves as a leader. Such people can call on the crowd to attack police officers, to seize administrative buildings, to create barricades in the streets, to set fire to cars.
In the end, the provocateurs “dissolve” in the crowd, and the crowd itself, led by the call from a completely unknown person, does what it was offered in this format. The crowd, as if programmed, begins to turn itself on, and this can result in the most incredible results.
Vivid examples of such protests are actions in Belarus, Ukraine, and a number of Russian cities. The crowd is created, the direction of its movement is formed, “started”, and then they try to arrange a massacre by the hands of those who went out on the street, having been subjected to the same herd instinct. As a result, it turns out that the provocateurs come out, as they say, dry from the water. And those who went out “for the company” may also be involved in criminal cases-only because they, yielding to the calls of individual persons and the influence of the crowd itself, rushed to the law enforcement officers, believing that this is the only way they “protect freedom and democracy”.
This was the case during the anti-presidential actions in the Republic of Belarus. The opposition candidate, Svetlana Tikhanovskaya, lost the election and simply fled to Lithuania. And from there, she called on the Belarusian people to protest, boycott traffic on the streets, and sabotage the work of enterprises. Many people actually followed such calls, not even always realizing that they were being manipulated by forces outside the republic. People rallied, did not go to school and work, believing that this way they would be able to achieve what they themselves considered justice. But then gradually sobering up began to come. You can not endlessly shout chants in the streets, wrap yourself in a white-red-white flag and expect that “Europe will come and help”. Reality turned out to be reality. Someone lost their job, someone was expelled from the university-banal for absenteeism. And the” national leader”, as Svetlana Tikhanovskaya calls herself, did not just spit on the real interests of people, but also continued to travel around Europe, accepting gifts and calling on European leaders to impose economic sanctions against their native country and their compatriots. As a result, the activities of Tikhanovskaya, or rather those who are behind it, broke the fate of many Belarusians, who now have yet to rethink the fact that they were brazenly used and simply thrown out as unnecessary.
But it is impossible to sum up all mass protest actions under a single denominator. For they are not only inherently destructive. Often mass actions are associated with a real popular will, when people understand that only by their pressure they can stop obscurantism, illegal actions.
In 2019-2020, mass protests were held in Montenegro, where the Montenegrin people were able to defend their demands to the official authorities regarding the law on religious freedom. People came out to defend the Orthodox faith, the faith that they have professed for hundreds of years, and which was tried to be persecuted by representatives of the elites who were determined to change the Montenegrin culture. Only mass resistance to the imposed destructive idea allowed the population to defend its cultural code.
In the same Montenegro, people expressed their opinion about the country’s accession to NATO. The official authorities ignored the opinion of the people, literally dragging the country into The North Atlantic military bloc, although according to polls, no more than 28% of citizens were in favor of joining. Now NATO is reaping the benefits: every third resident of Montenegro is a supporter of the country’s immediate withdrawal from the alliance and is ready to defend their opinion at rallies. In reality, there are much more of them, so many are still afraid to voice their opinion in front of the NATO functionaries who conduct such surveys.
As a result, we can say that groups of people can be different in mentality social groups. If some are willing to obediently fulfill the will imposed from the outside, to become programmed for actions that do not fit in with their own interests at all, then others can demonstrate their own opinion, their core, defending their interests, the interests of their compatriots and the country in which they live and whose prosperity they want.
Author: Igor Ahmetov (Editor in chief of the portal “Wave of Caspy”)
(The views and opinions expressed in this article are only of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views, opinion or position of World Geostrategic Insights).