political monologue. Although not angry, he was primed for it. Despite the past 20 years of peace, and an extraordinary economic boom in Ireland over that period, he began to talk about martyrs, hunger strikes, the oppressed Irish, and the fact that we “still have to free our country”. And with his spirits lifted by nostalgia for the era of terrorism, he announced that “The next song I’m going to sing is a rebel song . . .”. His references to past struggles – fictional and actual – against British rule were lost on his audience.
Peace had created a vacuum in this folk-singer’s life. He was pining for that old era of tribal antagonism. Not for violence, but for the meaning that the conflict gave to him. It gave depth to his music. And it gave him a place to belong and feel valued. The only people who showed up that day to listen to his music and his republican speeches were foreigners. But that tribalism is back, and we need to understand the anger that drives it.
MARK: Okay Eric, the theme of this first dialogue is public anger and the energy of tribes. The idea that anger can regulate tribes is something people are unlikely to be familiar with. How does it help us to understand what’s happening in politics today?
ERIC: Let’s start with sports fans. Our propensity to seek group identity, and the motivation it provides, is deep-rooted. Even if all we have in common is the colour of a shirt, we will seek group allegiance, fight for our identity, regulate and threaten dissenters. The “angry fan” craves to be taken seriously, and that is significant. One of the first things I did when we started thinking about anger was a very simple big data analysis using IBM’s Watson Analytics. I simply asked Watson to scan hundreds of thousands of news stories and sort those referencing “anger” into groups. The results confirmed public anger as an expression of moral outrage, but what really surprised me was the association with sports. Angry fans come up a lot.
Thinking about sports shows us how people enjoy tribalism – why else do we buy season tickets to watch teams that are rubbish? We pay money to be tribal. Sports fans also teach us that tribalism motivates: hard-core fans will travel to watch terrible games, in any weather, in locations that are difficult to get to. Once you are alert to the concept of an angry fan, why they are angry becomes clear. If you ever want to witness tribal anger, but can’t face a political rally, go to a football match.
Interestingly, angry fans are nearly always a minority. Evolution has not made all fans angry fans for a reason. They are a functional minority. They are loyal, committed, potentially violent and feel the tribal identity strongly.
Also, when you study the tribal identity of sports fans, you realize that there is a hierarchy of loyalty and the angry fan is very high in that ranking. Often he (and as the literature on anger shows us, it typically is a “he”) will regulate his own side. I have seen angry fans berating their own side for not chanting loudly enough, for not being committed enough. Their own players, managers and coaches are just as likely to be subjected to aggressive abuse – for insufficient commitment or for demonstrating a lack of group loyalty – at least as much as the opposing fans are. Indeed, some fans will even smash up large parts of their own city – and that’s when they win (see Eagles fans’ destruction of Philadelphia after Superbowl 2018). The angry fan regulates and reinforces tribal identity, which is an inherently political act.
Tribal identity and morality have one thing in common. Ethics and morality, the social codes that determine “the right thing to do”, are primarily aimed at protecting our collective interests. Societies thrive because we have ethical norms of behaviour that support our common goals. Ethical norms solve what social scientists call “collective action” problems, which arise when there is a conflict between the interests of the individual and those of the group. For example, it is in everyone’s interest to pay taxes, even though an individual would benefit if she doesn’t. We typically solve this problem with independent arbiters, regulation and the threat of sanction, which is the main reason we have a judicial system, law enforcement, and indeed governments.
But when corporations or rich individuals evade paying taxes – like in Iceland – we get angry. Anger carries the threat of retribution when an ethical norm is violated. It’s a way of saying, “stop doing that, or you’ll regret it”. The Icelanders reaction to the revelations of the “Panama Papers” was moral outrage. Their political elite appeared to believe that there was one rule for the many and another for them, the few. Violating that norm resulted in an anger that reshaped Icelandic politics. The ongoing unrest in France is motivated by the same emotion. We the people, in our common yellow jackets, against you, the cosmopolitan elites who tax us without representing us.
Now think about tribal identity more broadly. What is the social function of the tribe? It is very simple. Humans are much more successful operating in groups and being part of a group increases your odds of survival. But in a world of limited resources you need to decide who is in the group and who is not. We can’t survive on our own, but we can’t include everyone if resources are scarce. Our hardwiring to form groups is so profound that we will form tribes based on trivial differences – indeed, perhaps we always form them based on trivial differences.
In social psychology there is a very well established theory called the minimal group paradigm, which identifies that our predisposition to form groups can be based on completely superficial distinctions. In ancient Rome, for example, a chariot race that divided the city into different coloured teams produced riots that killed hundreds. Our propensity for group adherence is a universal, profound, and often imperceptible reflex. Little wonder then that it matters for our politics.
Now, not all groups should be seen as tribal. Tribal identity is a particularly deeply felt and existential form of group identity, which needs periodic enforcement and regulation in the same way that social norms do. Most of the time we are not focused on our tribal identity. We get on with our lives. In peaceful, prosperous times, tribal identity takes a back seat. But if we think we are threatened, if we think resources are becoming scarce, or if we are stressed – the minority of angry fans serves a function. They fire up the tribe for battle and keep everyone in line. Viewed through this lens, the parallels in contemporary global politics become clearer.
Current disputes over trade provide a good example. The great French anthropologist, Marcel Mauss, said “In order to trade, man must first lay down his spear”. It is not a coincidence that Donald Trump has chosen trade as his antagonism of choice. It is also not a coincidence that the British right-wing, which is intellectually pro-trade, engages in absurd contortions and denials of evidence to justify leaving the most profitable free trading bloc in the world – the European Union – in order to set up new trade deals with other tribes deemed preferable.
MARK: That all makes sense. So we have two types of public anger. We have moral outrage – a legitimate response to being ignored, a vocalizing of wrong-doing, and a call for redress and action. That is the anger we should be listening to and responding to. On the other side we have anger as a tribal energy that can be cynically harnessed and weaponized by opportunists. But in viewing both of these forms of anger as emotions that function to solve a collective action problem – to help us survive collectively – you risk making tribal anger seem benign. Is it?
ERIC: We need to draw a clear distinction between legitimate public anger and the cynical manipulation of tribal anger for political ends. Indeed, I would go much further. By focusing on tribal anger I think we can make the case that an alignment of the interests of the media and the global political elite is using this energy to motivate voters and win elections, and this is extremely dangerous. Tribal anger is after all only one step removed from tribal violence. The challenge for a non-violent politics is to get the message loud and clear about legitimate grievance, and then to respond with an alternative politics. Why? Because any alternative politics has to matter – it must be significant enough on an emotional level to create political identities independent of tribalism. Tribalism is not the only motivating political identity, but it is a powerful reflex when we are stressed and angry.
MARK: Let’s talk some more about this. Aren’t political identities always tribal?