Genesis
Response
Penultimate
Finale
March 12th, 2020
In his seminal work, The Making of the English Working Class, the Marxist historian E.P. Thompson chided his colleagues for not giving due attention to the infamous plebeian “mobs” of the 18th Century. Such “spontaneous popular direct action,” he wrote, “rested upon more articulate popular sanctions and was validated by more sophisticated traditions than the word ‘riot’ suggests.”
The mobs of this era, rather than being a force of unadulterated and irrational chaos, emerged as a logical response to legal overreaches, poverty wages, or gouged food prices. Their violence was not one of pure impunity but of self-restraint and order. In many cases, hungry mobs cornered grain merchants, not to loot them, but to force them to sell at a fair price. “Such ‘riots,’” Thompson wrote, “were popularly regarded as acts of justice.”
Today’s “social media mobs,” as Robby termed them in his opening essay, are no different. While there have been some regrettable cases of dragging ordinary people for social media foolishness, the focus of “cancel culture” has been on those who feel entitled to positions of power and influence despite the disapproval of the masses.
While Robby agrees with me on deplatforming criminal abusers like Harvey Weinstein, he has previously insisted that someone like Shane Gillis—who was fired from Saturday Night Live after videos of him using racial slurs and disparaging Asians and Muslims went viral—is a “victim.” Nevermind that Gillis, as Robby himself acknowledged, is still booking stand-up gigs: the crime of the digital mob is that “his chance at mainstream success is ruined for now.”
But why should Gillis, or any one comedian, be entitled to a spot on SNL? Because he’s very funny? Well clearly not, if the tens of thousands of the social mob don’t think so. We have become so used to a small and uncountable set of gatekeepers deciding who is worthy of “mainstream” cultural recognition—book deals, speaking gigs, TV slots—that we are horrified when they actually respond to the interests of ordinary people.
Shane Gillis may not be some plutocratic executive, or an English grain baron, but he’s no more entitled to a gig on SNL than you or me. If the fans, the audience, the “mob” doesn’t think he’s funny, then why should he be on SNL over someone who is?
America may have a political democracy—well, barely—but it remains extremely autocratic in media, culture, and economy. Mobs are the natural, human response of ordinary people to unjust systems over which they have no “legitimate” means of recourse. So until we take the means of cultural production from the few and give them to the many, count me among those cheering the mob.
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