Could there be a sinister aspect to
commonplace grumblings on social media? I recently came across a complaint on
social media by a person who claimed that a young man on a bike had assaulted
him and threatened him. The complaint which included a photo and a caption ended
with the complainant asking the readers of his post “What should be done about
such goondagiri [sic] where a law-abiding citizen has to face such humiliation
that too by people who have shamelessly broken the law?”
Judging by the fact that the photograph was shared close to one hundred and ninety three times on social media the question was obviously rhetorical. The post was shared precisely to offer up the biker to public justice and ensure that he be shamed, ostracized or punished by other means. But this is precisely where we have to pause and take stock of our actions because these kinds of complaints and appeals to public justice are in fact calls to vigilante justice.
Vigilantes are groups of citizens
who take it on themselves to undertake law enforcement in their community
without legal authority, typically because the legal agencies are thought to be
inadequate. Because vigilantism is often associated with mob justice we
associate the term with howling mobs and violent action. However, the roots of
vigilante actions lie well beyond these dramatic acts. Vigilantism does not
begin with a lynching. Lynching is merely the highpoint of vigilante
action. Vigilantism begins when
individuals abandon the state’s justice delivery system, prefer a kangaroo
court of public opinion, and take it upon themselves to administer justice.
When this happens what we have is the jettisoning of the system of due process
through which facts can be established and a fairly objective decision can be
reached.
What is particularly scary is that
it is not just in the realm of social media that one can see appeals to
vigilante justice. Indeed, one sees the mass media, whether print or
audiovisual, also engaging in setting up popular courts, presuming guilt before
a person is held guilty by the judicial system, and condemning these people in
very forceful terms. These are in fact terrifying signs because it signals that
we are increasingly moving towards a breakdown of a system of a rule of law,
and due process, two concepts that ensure that justice is done.
Let us mine the post that inspired
this column for examples. In this particular instance the complainant alleged that
the biker rode on the sidewalk and responded violently to the polite request to
follow the law and get off the sidewalk. If
we rely entirely on the account on social media we have only one side of the
story. What we do not have is the biker’s account. It is possible that the
biker’s version may be radically different. He might argue that he recognizes
that the bike should not be on the sidewalk but there were extenuating
circumstances for the violation. He might also argue that while acknowledging
his fault the complainant was not particularly polite but in fact aggressive.
It is because there are always at least two versions to a conflict that one
needs a judicial system manned by an impartial third party. Without an
objective system of justice delivery we have no way to determine whether the
photographer was in fact telling the truth. One would recognize that a social
media complaint does not provide such a dialogical approach to conflict
resolution but only presents one version that we often take as the gospel
truth.
Central to a justice delivery system
is the requirement of being dispassionate. In the post that I refer to, the
complainant indicated that after being assaulted and threatened he approached
the police who did not act on his complaint. It was the failure to get support
from the logical agents of law and order enforcement that he turned to social
media. As such, it turns out that the police were also responsible for the
disaffection that drove the complainant to social media. If this was the case,
why not post images of the allegedly errant police persons as well? Indeed, in
the post I refer to the complaint ended the caption with statement indicating “Please note that I don't intent [sic] to target any politician or
policeman. My grouch is purely against such law-breakers who are full to the
brim with arrogance.”
One of the significant features of
vigilante justice is that the vigilantes very often attack the weak. Further,
it is not the structure that is attacked, but individual manifestations of a
larger, social problem. For example, we know that the sidewalk is hardly
respected in our country. Sidewalks are often in a bad state of disrepair, and
when available are routinely used to park vehicles. In such a situation it is
little wonder that when people are rebuked for using their vehicles on the
sidewalk they respond aggressively wondering why they are the only ones to be
pulled up and not the others.
Interventions in social media are
not innocent. They can often be the apparently innocent appeals that will
eventually end in violent vigilante justice. It is imperative, therefore, that
we resist the temptation to invite social ire against individuals on social
media. To redress this problem what we need to do is to hold the state and its
agencies responsible for their primary task; the upholding of a system of due process
and the rule of law. It is no use utilizing social media as an alternative to
the state system precisely because such a process is not only capricious but it
threatens to empty the state of its responsibilities leaving behind a state
only interested in asserting its powers. Neither of these situations is an
ideal one.
(A version of this post was first published in the O Heraldo on 10 Jan 2017)