A lot has been said about the role of ‘coordination’ in the August 2024 xenophobic riots. But there is
a significant ‘spontaneous’ element that also needs explanation, as does the
relation between coordination and spontaneity in collective events like these.
This is where social psychology comes in.
A short answer to the question of why the August
riots spread is meta-perception and collective empowerment of
specific group identities.
‘Meta-perception’ refers to what people believe about what other people
believe. Collective empowerment in events like these can have different
sources.
First, it can arise from a belief about public
opinion. With the unexpected Brexit and Trump results in 2016, xenophobes suddenly (and mistakenly) believed that
their racist views were widely shared. They thought
they would be supported if they took threatening and violent action against
those they perceived as ‘foreign’. The Brexit and Trump hate-crime spikes were
driven by empowerment, not just grievance.
Why might people at the first of the August wave of
xenophobic riots (Southport, 30th July) feel their views were widely
shared? Social media has been highlighted. But note also that, just three days
before, ‘thousands
of people’ marched in London on the ‘Tommy Robinson’ ‘patriots’ demo. A big
demonstration is a way of building a sense that ‘you are not alone’, that many
others think like you, and so of capacity building.
Second, empowerment can arise within the events.
Where police appear increasingly unable to prevent the rioting, people in
further locations gain a sense of vicarious empowerment. They believe the
police locally won’t cope either. Although activists have been identified as leading
players in the far-right riots, where others share with them the police as a common
outgroup, they too can become empowered.
This helps explain why other people less committed to the xenophobic ideology
also start joining in.
Moreover, enacting their xenophobic identity in a
way they are not usually able (through attacks on shops, hotels etc. but also
defeating the police) is itself empowering to them because it reverses normal
social relations. It enhances their sense of agency. It fuels another kind of
spread. Those involved now feel confident to do the same again, perhaps travelling to another location to do so.
Third, collective empowerment can arise from the
expectation that like-minded others will come out onto the streets locally. The
precondition for this expectation is the participant’s belief that there are
others locally who broadly agree with them and who therefore constitute an ‘us’
or ‘we’. When there is a critical mass of such people, a riot can occur. When
riots happen in other locations over ‘similar’ issues, such people increasingly
believe that people will now come out on to their own streets locally. Belief
that others like self will come onto the street provides expectations of
support for ingroup normative action (in this case xenophobic action) and hence
the intention to act. The social media calls from the far-right activists could
help promote the expectation also, by creating an impression of widespread
intentions.
Solutions to this crisis of xenophobic riots from a
social psychological perspective address these empowerment processes at source.
First, potential participants need to understand that there is not the wider
public support they think there is for their views, that the opposite is the
case. Second, prevent them
mobilizing and marching, to limit that capacity-building. Third, prevent their actions (including smaller acts of
hate) from having a tangible impact – prevent them from turning their
subjective identity into objective reality – by negating and cancelling out
their effects. And fourth, as it is particular
identities that are empowered or disempowered, assert and support collective
identities antagonistic to theirs. For example, well-organized and -attended
groups and activities based on international class solidarity help to defeat
racism and xenophobia on the streets by making such solidarity more realistic
than the racist vision.
This analysis and these kinds of actions also
address the wider problem of why people support tyrannical systems such as
fascism. These movements gain much of their support
from being seen able to put their beliefs into practice. Their capacity for
organizing and achieving their goals legitimizes them and gives them
credibility. Undermining their capacity to act and organize undermines their
credibility in the eyes of others who might consider supporting them.
