Precursor to the Fever

Two days ago, I posted an essay, “The Fever,” in which I detailed what I see as the mechanism undergirding at least some of the genocidal fervor that is evidently present in Israeli society.

Leah Mickens, in the comments, responded in part with this critique:

“I don’t think we have to resort to theories about ‘mass delusion’ to understand the Israeli mindset. Their problem is a genocidal mindset. They know exactly what they’re supporting and they’re not shy about proclaiming it, because they know the US has their back to protect them from any consequences. After all, the US did the exact same thing to its indigenous population and no one cared then and they don’t care now.”

I replied to Leah in the comments, but I wanted to bring out part of her critique so as to provide more of an examination. Why settle on the terminology of “mass delusion” to describe what is taking place in Israeli society? I believe it is critical, actually, in order to come to terms with the vortex of emotion that appears to be churning like a typhoon in Israeli culture at this moment.

Gathering → crowd → mob.

There is a natural progression, a spectrum of sorts: a group, as in an audience for a classical symphony, is a gathering, a collection of individuals; a group of spectators such as that at a sporting event (who are invested in a particular team) are a crowd; and a crowd that can be incited and/or move as one is a mob.

The progression here is that of intensity, of cohesion, and of deindividuation. The more one becomes part of the mob, the less access one has to inhibitory drives, and it is widely held among neuroscientists and cognitive scientists and inhibition is at the heart of self-control — that is, of being able to master one’s environment rather than being mastered by it. The mob environment removes inhibition, thus driving an overall sense of unification with the group at the expense of one’s sense of being an individual, i.e., a person self-possessed and self-controlled.

A sustained sense, ranging between crowd and mob, can be found in some stable settings, such as high-intensity / high-devotion groups, also known as cults. Because of the structure of the social system, the atmosphere or environment produces conditions that induce a sense of deindividuation. More often than not, this is engineered so as to increase the depth and/or accelerate the rate of bonding between and among members. There is a use value to this type of social engineering / manipulation.

This group structure is not limited to small groups (though, for groups larger than the “natural” limit of 75-150 humans in a group, a stratified hierarchy almost certainly is necessary to ensure group cohesion and efficiency). Indeed, this structure can occur at the level of society.

I personally have never been part of a cult or of a mob angry and bent on destruction. However, I have been part of a close-knit, intense community, one with unusually strong bonds of friendship; and I can extrapolate that sense of spontaneous and heartfelt investment in the group to one where that sense is manufactured and demanded rather than freely generated. That latter scene is a cult atmosphere.

It’s kind of paradoxical upon a surface read, however. The standing bonds between members in a cult are constructed and somewhat forced; but the member feels an intensity for the group as well as when he or she is of the group. It’s that sense that, taken in the aggregate, comprises the atmosphere and which can shift the group from crowd to mob given the “right” circumstances.

The paradox is explained by taking into account psychological forces. Cults that are able to sustain their structure rely upon a reproducible configuration of manipulations —  external, internal, or both — that predictably evoke certain responses from the group member. Oftentimes, this involves intentional evocation of cognitive dissonance by (a) group leader(s) that will have a certain probability of moving the group member in a desired direction.

One especially pernicious way to move group members in a particular direction, as well as to drive both a sense of unity among members and to heighten an us-versus-them aspect with those who aren’t in the group, is to tell members that they possess an innate superiority to others. This is an absolutely toxic form of unifying members into one mass, but it is often effective: those who are told this and internalize this message most likely will see other members of the group as worthy and the same as they, while viewing outsiders as utterly different and decidedly unworthy.

That’s a delusion. When an entire group believes that, it’s fair to call that a mass delusion. And when an entire society is driven or encouraged to believe that, again it is fair to describe that as a mass delusion or mass psychosis, where ‘psychosis’ is taken to mean “break with reality” and ‘delusion’ “an inability or refusal to adjust beliefs in the face of evidence that runs counter to those beliefs.”

And one can say that this idea of superiority is a shared delusion precisely because it’s based on the group. Indeed, the idea provides structure to the group. Function follows form; and if superiority weren’t part of the structure, the group would fundamentally function differently.

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It’s my tentative supposition, admittedly reached from the outside looking in, that Israeli society for a bevy of reasons is undergoing an undulation of psychological forces, clearly set in motion by the shock of the October 7th attacks, which, combined with a standing belief system that already subscribed to a form of supremacy, has led to this witches’ brew of genocidal desire and intent.

This genocidal fever is being constantly stoked by leaders of Israeli society, and the cultural viewpoint is being continuously refocused on the pain and shock of that day, generating a sense that the day is not past but is still vividly in the now. That sense of time standing still is an illusion, one that amplifies the need for revenge, because the anguish of that day is being relived over and over again. In essence, the leaders are taking their citizens through a guided imagery session where the citizens are crawling on shards of glass.

This is intolerable to the Israelis, because for many decades they have collectively viewed Palestinians as being beneath them.

The late Israel Shahak, a pro-peace Israeli activist, related this in an interview given in 1991:

Interviewer: How does Israel benefit psychologically from the occupation?

Shahak: “Here I will report to you very many talks which I had during many years with younger Israelis, younger than me, and most of them from the working class. Let us imagine to ourselves a boy of 18 years old. Israeli Jew, of course. Poor.

“So, most of the time, he was oppressed, let’s say. Everybody humiliated him; he had to obey orders, both from his patriarch family [and] by the headmaster in his school; he was afraid of the, let’s say, the policeman on the street; and so on and so on. Suddenly, he’s being put in uniform, and after two or three or four months’ training, he arrives on the street of Ramallah, and he gives orders. 

“Not only does he give orders to poor Palestinians, but he can stop a rich Palestinian in his mountain residence (?), and this rich Palestinian must wait until he waves his hand. And he can curse him and nothing happens. And the Palestinian must call him ‘sir’ or ‘officer’ and he can call him ‘boy’, even though the Palestinian may be 70 years old.

“In a racist society, this racism gives enormous satisfaction! This is the point of my going to the United States, to the state of Mississippi, and freely talking with Whites of all kinds (who talk freely to me because I was an outsider and foreigner) gave me great experience! I have intimately seen that the poor Whites in Mississippi, they derive the greatest satisfaction from humiliating the Blacks in their day-to-day contact! I intimately have seen that they walk to a Black [person] and a Black [person] has to step aside. And even a smile appears on their face. Exactly the same sly smile, exactly the same kind of behavior happens here.

“He is a master! And this is the reason why so very many people want to serve in the reserves as late as possible. I know very many people during my own service who volunteer to serve until their sixties, and they worked. They wanted to serve more and more, not really as they pretended, to help the army, but just to be on the street in a conquered territory and to feel a master.”¹

So it is particularly galling and enraging that any subset of Palestinians, such as Hamas (who, to be clear, are not all of the Palestinians), were able to inflict this devastating and humiliating attack upon them — an attack that their leaders are forcing them to live again and again.

In short, the Israeli populace is being provoked into moving along the continuum, from polity to crowd and, now, into mob mode. Their leaders are inciting them to genocide. And the leaders will repeat this until they are able to achieve their ultimate goal, which is to dispossess the Palestinians of their land so as to fulfill their vision of realizing Greater Israel. Israeli leaders need that energy in the populace so as to derive legitimacy for this illegitimate act.

1. The video is available for playback only on YouTube. It is available here. The quoted section begins at approximately 46:30.