Inaction in the face of fear: what an anti-semitic Facebook post tells us about ourselves

Over the weekend, there was a lot of noise on social media. Aside from the World Cup, there was the small matter of an Israeli/Palestine conflict that is in danger of escalating into a full-scale ground war. In the midst of all this, someone purporting to be the social media manager for the ANC (South Africa’s ruling party) posted an image of Adolf Hitler to Facebook, containing the following text:

“Yes man you were right…I could have killed all the Jews, but left some to let you know why I was killing them…Share this picture to tell the truth a [sic] whole world”.

The image, and the sentiment behind it, are disgusting. What’s really worrying though, is how much attention it got in the first place. While Palestinians were fleeing their homes, desperately trying to evade Israeli bombs and roving gangs were attacking synagogues in Paris, people gave attention to something that any right thinking person would dismiss out of hand.

Why?

Well, the most likely answer in that regard is because venting their anger could actually achieve something in this case. And, to a degree, it did. The post was deleted. Does the person who posted it regret their actions? Maybe. Will it make them view Jewish people in a different light? Possibly, but that’s unlikely to happen immediately.

Trying to fully understand the complexities of the Israel/Palestine conflict meanwhile can seem impossible, never mind trying to arrive at that understanding and a course forward in 140-characters or fewer.

It’s a phenomenon you actually encounter on social media fairly often. In the face of something overwhelming, people need to feel like they’re part of something and that they’re taking tangible action. The trouble is, there are often times when they’re doing the exact opposite.

The Hitler post brings to mind another Facebook image that caused incredible outrage in the recent past. In late 2013, a photo emerged showing US TV presenter Melissa Bachman with a lion she had killed in a hunt.

In its wake, support began building for a number of campaigns which, at best, had questionable chances of succeeding. Perhaps the most preposterous was a campaign trying to ban Bachman from returning to South Africa, despite the fact that she had done nothing wrong in the eyes of the law.

While the response to the Hitler image was far quieter than the one Bachman’s photo received, the avenues for rational response were far less clear cut. In the case of the latter, donating time and money to lion conservancy efforts would have made far more sense than trying to get a person banned from a country.

In the case of Israel and Palestine, donations to even the worthiest organisations run with the aiming of fostering tolerance and understanding between the two people can seem completely overawed by the scale of the conflict.

And so we shout “somebody should do something!” into the great social media echo chamber. Sometimes that can actually seem like it’s working too.

It certainly appeared to be working in the case of the hashtag #bringbackourgirls, which brought attention to the plight of 200 Nigerian schoolgirls abducted by the militant group Boko Haram. Five months later though, the girls remain in custody, with the Nigerian military incapable of dealing with the threat presented by the group.

How much worse then for a conflict that has not improved over the decades despite, or perhaps because of, multiple attempts at intervention from outside powers?

Where the mob meets the monkey mind

While the examples I’ve listed here might seem disparate, there’s a commonality in them. That commonality comes from our desire to do take action on an issue, but in the midst of that desire our rational thoughts can be overtaken by emotions like greed and fear. Balance that kind of behavior with our evolutionary desire to survive (who among us would seriously consider going into the parts of Nigeria controlled by Boko Haram or plant ourselves in the middle of the Israeli/Palestine conflict?) and suddenly the behaviour of the masses on social media seems less deplorable and suddenly, well, human.

The trick, and it’s not easy, is to remind ourselves that while we may be part of a collective whole, we are capable of independent thought.

Image: Jonny White via Flickr.