The featured image: AI interpreting and visualising the content of my blog entry.
Having read three chapters of Anne Applebaum’s latest book, “Autocracy Inc.,” I found myself compelled to restart my reading. It appears that I had inadvertently lost the narrative thread she is skillfully weaving, which explores the intricate dynamics of collaboration between autocratic structures and the silent, covert, or misguided collaborations that exist within societies that self-identify as part of the West or those that embrace concepts such as democracy, the rule of law, and fundamental human rights.
There’s this cliché about the bully at school: The guy who picks on weaker children in his or her class. He dominates the weaker guy in a menacing way, towering over him, threatening him, or even beating him up. He takes away whatever the bully wants or simply destroys things the weak guy holds dear. We’ve seen this all, whether in the comic Calvin & Hobbes, where Calvin is abused by the bully Moe, or in any Hollywood movie, where the underdog either gets beaten up or suddenly rises to beat up the bully.
Pretty binary stuff, isn’t it? The victim either loses the fight or rises to the challenge for various reasons, including whilst discovering his superpowers, as depicted in numerous movies, such as those in the Marvel Cinematic Universe and the DC Universe. Alternatively, the person with superpowers rescues someone from a bully. I personally enjoy the movie “Venom,” particularly the scene where the bully is a man extorting the owner of a corner store, Mrs. Chen. In this scene, Eddie Brock/Venom emerges to the rescue, unleashing a complex mix of emotions on the side of moviegoers, including fun, anger, joy in exacting revenge and retaliation, intertwined with disgust at the sight of Venom biting heads off. There are countless variations of this theme in pop culture, and these movies are exceptionally adept at evoking profound emotions that resonate with us all, often without our ability to fully comprehend the appeal of such content. However, it’s important to note that these movies primarily tap into purest emotions that we all identify with.
On one hand, as moviegoers, we despise the bully. We identify with the victim, we experience anger when the bully gets away with their actions and satisfaction when they are punished or meet their demise. On the other hand, there’s a crowd that often remains in the background: The bully’s followers. These are the individuals who surround the bully. In some movies, you’ll see a cute girl asking the bully why they’re doing that. In other movies, this person will be almost as mean as the bully themselves. Or this person will stay in the bully’s orbit, feeling a bit of pity for the victim. Sometimes there is a girl who pities the victim and later becomes the victim’s girlfriend after the underdog has finally stood up against or taken revenge on the bully. Again, there are many different variations of this same meme.
My primary question is how and why a bully can get away with their actions. Imagine a bully who constantly abuses others but has no followers. Is this even possible? A stone-cold sociopath who bullies while everyone around them walks away, clearly expressing their aversion for the bully, taking the victim’s side, or simply ignoring the bully when they’re abusing someone, no longer fits the typical image of a bully. It’s more like something out of Hannibal Lecter’s world.
A bully always has a base of followers under their control. They need followers, and they design their actions to keep those followers in their orbit and to increase their number.
The concept of a bully necessitates at least three elements: the bully, the victim (which may even be wrongly labeled as the person attacking the bully), and the bully’s circle of followers. However, there are more: the sea of people who are indifferent, and those who dislike the bully. For the bully, this combined group encompasses both potential future followers and individuals to be labeled as potential enemies. Anyone who doesn’t fall into either category is utterly uninteresting to the bully.
The followers serve as a primary motivation for the bully, who seeks to exert control over them and expand their number, aligning it with their desired objectives. In a school setting, the goal is to accumulate as many followers as possible within a specific class, as it represents the domain within which the bully exerts their influence. Conversely, in a national context, the group encompasses the entire population.
The followers are the ones who empower the bully, but this group is more complex. The bully gains influence over their followers, and typically, the bully is driven by controlling their circle of followers and expanding their support base. In essence, the existence of the bully is contingent upon the presence of those who willingly follow them. In turn, the motivations and actions of these people also have a substantial influence on the bully. In many ways, the bully is the protagonist who is most visible. Which puts the followers second, with some sticking out into the limelight, but most of them staying second or third row. Yet, it is this group which has taken the decision to side with the bully. The interaction between a bully and a group of followers is more complex than that between a pied piper and the children he is marching into doom. People in a bully’s orbit have their own agendas, dreams, motivations, delusions, and rationalizations.
From some point on, the bully and that individuals’ followership develop a corporate identity. History shows that from this point on, individual accountability for consequences of actions becomes very difficult to establish.
As a German national born 14 years after the end of WW II, I witnessed firsthand how painful it was for a society to grapple with the question of moral responsibility of the uncounted individuals who were part of the system producing the Holocaust. As a child, a teenager, and as adult I witnessed the disbelief of people from other societies how a system could be overwhelmed, like when the Republic of Weimar was finished off by the NSDAP, Hitlers’ political party. Those who had not witnessed how this works, they had profound difficulties grappling with some appreciation. It is easier to label persons as malevolent and evil than to acccept that every normal person is vulnerable to becoming complicit.
As a police officer engaging in international work of the UN and the EU in the aftermath of conflict giving birth to war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide, I always was confronted with the mantra of “Never Again”. I also witnessed firsthand the same process in other societies as I had seen it in post-war Germany: Processes of denial of collective responsibility, they run, just for example, deep related to the Srebrenica genocide. Which is but one example of so many.
Sunday, 27.10., Nr. 45 held one of his last big rally events in the final days of this U.S. election cycle, at New York’s Madison Square Garden. Before His Majesty’s speech, a long procession of members of the Trump Bully Club walked up to the microphones, spitting out every possible hate and disgust imaginable: Against Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio. Symbolic references against Black Americans. Derogatory elements against Palestinians, and anti-semitic jokes. Rude attacks against Vice President Kamala Harris. Transphobia against the LGBTQI community. Vitriol against immigrants at large. See a summary in The Guardian: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/oct/31/six-racist-bigoted-comments-trump-madison-square-garden
Of course, followed by the Bully in Chief himself. Who, in an interview with Tucker Carlson attacked Liz Cheney, daughter of former Vice President Dick Cheney, with suggesting she should be put in front of a military firing squad: “She’s a radical war hawk. Let’s put her with a rifle standing there with nine barrels shooting at her, OK?” He talks about Liz Cheney who is standing up, like a growing number of senior republican figures including from Trump’s own administration, against a second term of Trump as a U.S. President. To which Nr. 45 responds by talking about the “Enemy from Within”, making it abundantly clear what he will do when he would have a chance: Exacting revenge, and retaliation, by bending the rule of law into a rule of Donald Trump.
All that against a background of people NOT leaving the arena in disgust. People laughing, applauding, clapping.
Wednesday, 06.11., we wake up with the knowledge who is going to be Nr. 47. My children expressing profound shock and disbelief, and despair. Walking into the neighborhood cafe here in suburbian Toronto, there is only one topic. My phone flooded with European messages of disbelief. A joint feeling of emotional hangover.
At the time of this writing, the still ongoing ballot count includes 71.544.343 votes for Nr 45, and bringing him over the threshold of 270 electoral votes he needs for becoming Nr 47. Currently, he has won won 276.
Democracy at its best. Putting on record that the American people, in their majority, have voted for a future President who has taken down all norms of civilised behavior. Europeans rattled, worried, scared, or jubilating (depending on the same question like in the U.S., on which side of this polarized battle of civilisation they have chosen to stand). Make no mistake: We have our own devils in Europe.
To be continued. Everything changes, and this one will, too.
Stefan Feller 