In 1984, George Orwell famously described a totalitarian political order in which people were kept as docile subjects in part by a daily ritual called "Two Minutes Hate" in which the population directs all of its pent up fury at "Goldstein," a possibly fictional enemy of the state.
Thanks to social media we now know that the same dynamic can arise spontaneously, with fresh ire directed at a new manifestation of the partisan enemy nearly every day. It shows us that under certain circumstances — our circumstances — people can and will fasten onto an endless succession of real-life Goldsteins for the sheer, addictive joy of it — for the pure, delirious pleasure of denouncing manifestations of evil in our midst. Nothing, it seems, is quite as satisfying as singling out our fellow citizens for their moral failings and indulging in fantasies of their fully justified punishment.
How could Twitter be the death of Liberal Democracy?
Who is behind these anonymous tweets and how do we recognize them?
Listen to the two accounts of this weekend's confrontation between the Cov Cath HS student Nick Sandman and Native American Elder Nathan Phillips.
Can we find common ground? How do we break this cycle of hate?
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