The Pitfalls of Group Opposition

“There are no more ‘innocent’ or ‘neutral’ Russians anymore. Everyone has to make a choice, support or oppose this war,” wrote a former American Ambassador to Russia a few weeks ago on Twitter before deleting the post. The absolutist nature of public rhetoric surrounding Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has since become commonplace.

The Western response to the conflict is understandable and, in some ways, natural, especially early on in a conflict. It’s part of what rallies one tribe against another and focuses the mind into a binary ‘them or us’, ‘either/or’ mode. The result, however, has also been a refutation and cancellation of all things Russian, including its people, culture and historical legacy—and not just the perpetrators of the war and its related machinery and economy.

But, when this initial high emotional reaction is amplified into a herd-mentality on social media, a collective chorus of hard-line virtue signalling and activism, it may not be the best basis for effective action, and may cause unnecessary damage.

Banning the books of Dostoyevsky (who ironically was sent to a Siberian labour camp for reading banned books), cancelling Russian musicians, demanding that all Russians among us, like tennis star Daniil Medvedev, denounce Putin at the cost of danger to themselves and their families, and prohibiting academic and cultural cooperation in the name of righteously taking a stance will do more harm than good. In contrast, in World War II, the British government did not shy away from using the beginning of Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony as the clarion call for the resistance against Nazi Germany.

Even in conflict, when we aim to defeat an enemy, we should strive to confront, even fight, while retaining sufficient nuance that prevents us from doing unintended harm to our own side. Indeed this flexibility will be crucial in some instances to ultimately pursue the resolution of a conflict.

The point here is that under high emotion arousal, such as occurs during a crisis, the human mind focuses so intensely on the object in question—whether a deadly virus or a warmongering Russian despot—that all information that dissents with the emotional picture, including that which is useful, is devalued and excluded. This phenomenon has been described in many ways. The late American psychiatrist Arthur Deikman called this process ‘cult thinking,’ while Belgian professor Mattias Desmet refers to this dynamic as ‘mass formation.’

The nature of such a mind tends to lead to diminished realism: taking-in a narrower slice of reality that weakens our ability to garner information or maintain relations that we require (such as with Russians who can help us resolve the current conflict). Similarly, we become prone to making errors that are a threat to our survival (triggering worst case scenarios, such as Putin’s nuclear option), or we devalue and demonize outsiders to our point of view and treat them as inhuman (such as with ‘the unvaccinated’ or now, Russians). The greater our knowledge of these states of mind, where we are entranced into a narrower vision of the world, the more likely we are to mitigate their effects and get beyond them.

There is another way to oppose, even fight, while maintaining some degree of mental openness. It is summed up very well in the following story:

“Islam’s Fourth Caliph, Ali, was a courageous fighter and political leader. Ali once engaged a Christian knight on the battlefield. During combat the Christian fell to the ground. Ali was about to kill him when the knight, in a final act of defiance, spat in his face. But instead of lopping off his head, Ali sheathed his sword and let the knight go free. The knight was surprised and asked Ali why he did not kill him when he had the chance.

Ali answered, “If I’d killed you at that moment, it would have been from anger and against the principles of war.”

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