No. 1: Protesting feels good
Sometimes we simply like to protest for protest’s sake. For example, before Hitler’s ascent, it was “often a tossup whether a restless youth would join the Communists or the Nazis.” Groupthink is a powerful and coercive force, and it crosses political lines. Liberals may like to protest because it feels countercultural, conservatives because they are drawn to orthodoxy and feel compelled to preserve it. But although the content is different, the form is more or less the same.
No. 2: Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery
Mass movements, like nearly every other cultural artifact, are derivative and thus interchangeable. “One mass movement,” Hoffer says, “readily transforms itself into another.” Who’s to say the Tea Party didn’t in some way spawn the OWS protests, either as a logical next step or a retort? They’d probably be reluctant to admit it, but it’s likely that the Occupiers owe some creative debt to the Tea Party — and the Tea Party to every mass movement before it.
No. 3: It’s just something to do
Hoffer writes, “There is perhaps no more reliable indicator of a society’s ripeness for a mass movement than the prevalence of unrelieved boredom.” Though we may think we’re not lacking for action in today’s overly stimulated culture of constant distraction, the economic conditions that both the Tea Partyers and the Occupiers are targeting in fact make for the perfect protest in a petri dish.
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