We’ve been looking at the most abstract forms of group-narcissistic aggression in our recent surveys of Frantz Fanon, Ta-Nehisi Coates, Nikole Hannah-Jones, and Leo Strauss. We know that group narcissism cannot always be expressed in such a refined and passive-aggressive manner because of the variety of situations and individuals group narcissism must accommodate.
As a change of pace, let’s take a look at a recent happening in France (credit to Revolver for bringing this foreign language news to English-only barbarians)
Peace has returned to Montpellier after a meeting between imams and heads of gypsy clans
Franco-Moroccan Muslims and Gypsies have been involved in an all-out Road War until late last night.
Evidently Moroccans led a “punitive expedition” against the Gypsy community after a Gypsy driver killed a Moroccan in a hit-and-run accident after the World Cup semifinal between France and Morocco. Apartments, homes, and vehicles were ransacked and burned as “250 to 300 young people armed with Kalashnikovs and iron bars” sought to pogrom Gypsies. According to one report, a Gypsy man’s throat had been slit, though not fatally.
A video, broadcast Thursday, December 15 on social networks, shows a group of about twenty individuals running, most likely in the Mosson district, shouting " Allah Akbar " or " we will n**** you * your gypsy mothers ”.
The spokesman for the Gypsy community is named Fernand Maraval, known locally as “Yaka.” Yaka said that many Gypsy families had fled but that others had armed themselves and prepared for a siege. 10,000 French police were eventually mobilized and tear gas was used to put down the punitive expedition.
As of December 17, peace had returned and leaders from each faction, including the father of the Moroccan victim, had met at a mosque:
Moments of listening and dialogue this Saturday, December 17 in the afternoon between Muslims from La Paillade and members of the gypsy community, including two pastors at the Averroès mosque in La Paillade. Sitting deep in his chair, Aymen's dad remains silent. Too much pain for Lemmouar. Around him, in a room of the Averroès mosque in La Paillade, are gathered this Saturday afternoon, members of the Muslim community. Franco-Moroccans for the most part. In the circle, too, representatives of the gypsy community. Including two evangelical pastors and Fernand Maraval, known as Yaka, a recognized figure.
Chicago Gypsies have their own protestant churches but I don’t know much about their liturgy or beliefs. Apparently they are becoming more prominent in the Gypsy thing.
Reader requested analysis on immigration and group narcissism
Someone recently asked if I would comment upon the relationship between group narcissism and immigration policy.
Some immigration skeptics have bifurcated the economic and cultural issues posed by immigration but the two subjects are not necessarily distinct, as prominent economists have pointed out, e.g., here and here.
In general, low-skilled and socio-linguistically unassimilated immigration benefits “capital” (people who employ labor and charge rents) and harms domestic labor bargaining power while driving up the costs of living. Reflexively, social assimilation begets economic assimilation, and economic assimilation helps restore equilibrium between non-capital owners and capital owners.
Social assimilation among immigrants to the U.S.A. has declined, which means newer immigrant cohorts remain trapped in parochial group narcissism for longer than preceding cohorts, to the benefit of rich people and the detriment of everyone else.
Retaining separate-but-equal dhimmis and millets is a low-effort, cost-effective imperial strategy for farming subject populations and maintaining commercially-favorable equilibrium. The American civil religion’s approach to this strategy has been far less permissive of social segregation, but that seems to be changing. The civil religion into which immigrants are supposed to assimilate is nominally endorsed by American elites, but new immigrants seem to find it less attractive than prior generations. Why might that be? I think there are a variety of reasons, some of which we’ve already explored in our analyses of vicarious group narcissism or group narcissism by proxy. Another reason is that our elite culture seems far less prestigious and elite today, which makes assimilation less attractive to outsiders. We’ll continue to analyze both issues in upcoming posts.
Workplace Bullycide Victims are Paranoid
However, this doesn’t mean that American elites are entirely unconcerned with social instability. In fact, they are more concerned than ever.
Consistent with a recent trend in academia, a new Psypost clickbait article summarizes research on the connection between office “bullying” and conspiracy theories. The article shows that American elites remain concerned with policing the beliefs of their constituents, even as they allow group-narcissistic fracturing of the type documented by economists above.
“Conspiracy beliefs can impact the smooth running of societies,” said Jolley, an assistant professor in social psychology at the University of Nottingham. “Thus, it is paramount to understand the root causes that cause conspiracy beliefs, which can then help inspire ways to tackle them. Motivated by the work linking collective victimhood and conspiracy theorizing, we focused on a specific type of victimhood: workplace bullying.”
As with nearly all social psychology research today, the study first measured a correlation between a subjective perception and a belief, in this case, the perception of being bullied and belief in conspiracy theories:
For their research, Jolley and Lantain recruited 273 participants from an online crowdsourcing platform. All participants lived in the United Kingdom. After providing informed consent, the participants filled out two measures of bullying at work. One was called the Short Negative Acts Questionnaire and the second consisted of a list of questions about workplace bullying experiences in the last six months. Finally, the participants completed measures of paranoia, anxiety, hypervigilance, and conspiracy theories.
The researchers observed that paranoid personality traits might explain the propensity to believe in conspiracy theories:
Analyzing the data, it became clear there was a relationship between experiencing workplace bullying and having higher scores on measures of conspiracy beliefs. Furthermore, it became clear it was paranoia that was associated with both of the variables in question. “Specifically, bullying experiences were associated with increased paranoia, which in turn, were associated with a higher endorsement of conspiracy beliefs,” stated Jolley and Lantain.
The researchers attempted to control for subjective paranoia by devising an experiment that gave respondents a rational basis for perceiving the existence of conspiracies by asking the subjects to imagine being bullied in the workplaces. The results of the second experiment suggested that paranoid personality traits weren’t necessarily connected to belief in conspiracies, though asking subjects to imagine they were subjected to workplace bullying did seem to create an openness to conspiracy theories.
Thus while elites remain deeply interested in what you believe, they remain uninterested in whether new Americans can even understand what elites want you to believe.
Reader feedback requested
Some readers have requested that I review certain books or articles. I’ve been considering reviews of the following
John Yoo’s book on the Trump administration, Defender in Chief.
I think this will require an extended exposition of Yoo’s Article II jurisprudence and curious theory of executive precedent based upon the historical practices of American presidents.
Francis Fukuyama’s book on identity politics, Identity
Myopic Eeyore also asked me to review a book but I forget the title (ME, please send title again).
Please opine on what you’d like to see.