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The Edge of the American West 
14 comments
October 9, 2008 at 4:38 pm
Megan
OK, you guys are historians. What happens after the crowds get worked up? There’s the demagoguery step, and the fired-up mobs step, and then what comes next?
Does that anger have to become physical violence? Will neighborhoods burn? What happens if it doesn’t? What do people say afterward, when the inciting is finished? What do they remember and process? Does it dissipate or do they repress or do they die all fired up? Does the mob feeling require constant feeling, and they’re just going to be slightly embarrassed about the vehemence in two years?
What’s the conversion record from mob to riot? Do you get away with it most of the time, but rarely all hell breaks loose? What would it do to the election to see a headline like “McCain rally spills out of stadium, torches cars, breaks store windows”?
October 9, 2008 at 4:41 pm
Jason B
I made it to 2:49. I was too depressed to watch more.
October 9, 2008 at 6:36 pm
Rich Puchalsky
“There’s the demagoguery step, and the fired-up mobs step, and then what comes next?”
Well, we know what happens next, because these people are clearly hoping for the 60s to return. And these people don’t riot. They sometimes break heads. But mostly, the police riot on their behalf.
October 9, 2008 at 8:26 pm
Megan
That’s one thing that happens next, that they send the cops in. But maybe other things have happened, in other times or other countries, when people kept crowds at a fever pitch. Maybe sometimes it also dissipates. If only there were a discipline that studied when stuff happened before, that could offer insight into the present.
October 9, 2008 at 9:18 pm
bitchphd
I hope nothing happens next. I might be wrong, but watching that I was assuming it was somewhere in So Cal, and that those guys were basically like my uncle in Long Beach–sort of enjoying making outrageous statements and getting under the liberals’s skins. It’s sort of horrifying that people can enjoy being/sounding that insane, but *most* of those people seemed to me to be sort of playing it up for the camera.
October 9, 2008 at 9:40 pm
urbino
There’s the demagoguery step, and the fired-up mobs step, and then what comes next?
Phones not ringing. Awkward silences at the corner store. Mistaken identities on the subway. Then a Barbra Streisand song, a montage, and everybody’s kind of okay again, though wistful.
Wait, wait. Different thing.
I’m wondering if we’re about to see the conservative version of the 60s. That is, the right-wing true believers shooting their movement in the neck by rioting in the streets.
October 10, 2008 at 8:07 am
Rich Puchalsky
They don’t riot, urbino. Even if they do engage in mass violence, a “riot” is defined by the media.
But given that police work appeals to racists and authoritarians, they never really need to riot. All of those cops are hearing the same McCain/Palin appeals as these crowds, and a substantial number of them believe the same things. They’ll be enjoying their legal ability to riot long before any of the people in this video decide to do anything.
October 10, 2008 at 8:30 am
ben wolfson
Why aren’t all those people yelling “get a job” at work themselves?
October 10, 2008 at 8:56 am
Ron Tunning
This is one of the most disturbing videos I’ve seen and prompted the following entry on my local Democratic Party blog.
Senator John McCain and Governor Sarah Palin are dangerous. They’ve moved beyond being mere liars and crooks to stoking violence and fascism.
In viewing this video I was immediately reminded of film clips I’ve seen of Hitler’s Brown Shirts. McCain is intentionally appealing to peoples’ most base fears and prejudices, inciting hatred and creating an incendiary atmosphere that borders on treasonous.
One can only hope that wiser heads in the Republican Party exert pressure on McCain to halt his destructive campaign before it erupts into tragedy. Otherwise, all Republicans will be held responsible for the acts and behavior of these frightened people fueled by the inflammatory rhetoric of the leaders of their party.
Send a link to this to your family, friends and neighbors, whether they be Democrats, Republicans or Independents. We must stop McCain’s and Palin’s assault on civility and the rule of law and encouragement of a mob mentality.
October 10, 2008 at 9:16 am
drip
Those people are cowards. Like McCain, who can’t bring up Ayers to Obama’s face. They won’t riot. They won’t march. I suspect if things keep trending, they won’t even vote.
What’s next is likely to be more police surveillance, more local dust ups and a great deal of tension as the money (or credit cards, more accurately) tighten up.
If you haven’t watched to the end, its understandable, but go back. The last couple of minutes are quite inspiring.
October 10, 2008 at 3:19 pm
Matt McKeon
Jesus, you guys have got to chill out. People have been screaming stupid things in American politics for a couple of centuries.
The lesson is that people hang their prejudices on the hooks provided by the political campaign. How many of the people shouting “muslim” and “terrorist” thought Obama was either? They don’t want to vote Democratic, and maybe they mistrust a black man, and the political operatives give them hooks, catchphrases to recite.
What is surprising about this election is that a African American with the middle name of an American enemy is going to win. It’s like if John Tojo Kennedy won in 1960. That’s inspiring.
The only person who seemed really sincere was the anti abortion woman.
October 10, 2008 at 4:37 pm
urbino
People have been screaming stupid things in American politics for a couple of centuries.
And from time to time, the screaming leads to actual violence. I’m not calling for the 82nd Airborne to parachute onto McCain rallies. I’m just saying this kind of bitterness (the emotion that dare not speak its name) sometimes doesn’t just fade away. Historically speaking.
October 10, 2008 at 7:31 pm
JPool
Megan, unfortunately or fortunately, historians tend not to be generalizers in that way. As you seem to sense, a whole range of outcomes is possible both at the time and afterwards. Sometimes it’s genocide and sometimes it’s grumbling and resentment. This American Life reran a segment last year on the career of Harlod Washington and the coda was going and interviewing some of the working class Chicago whites who had so bitterly opposed him while he was mayor, but some of whom now recognized that he had done good thing while in office. One of them, in explaining her support for Obama in the Senate, mused that she had probably changed and that the country had changed. Obviously, not everyone is so flexible or willing to embrace a changing script or political fortunes.
There’s a lot of literature in Violence Studies on how these situations escalate, much of which is beyond my ken. As you and urbino note, though, this is not always just idle talk. One piece I can recommend is Jonathan Glassman’s study of how racial/ethnic/political divisions in Zanzibar developed out of seemingly mundane institutions and pracitices and laid the groundwork for violence that followed.
Glassman, Jonathon. “Slower Than a Massacre: The Multiple Sources of Racial Thought in Colonial Africa.” American Historical Review 109, no. 3 (2004): 720-54.
October 11, 2008 at 10:38 am
Megan
JPool, thanks for answering directly and thanks for the pointer to Violence Studies.