Aude Calloch

There’s always this sense of malaise when confronting people with their predecessors’ actions. Although this does not apply to everyone, we pretty much all have the tendency to defend the actions of individuals who we consider part of our in-group (I’ve touched on this notion in my May 2021 article “‘Tis a good time to talk about the notion of in-group bias.”). Because we identify and relate with those people, we think their actions should be defended as if they were our own. But how can we really explain this phenomenon? What is so compelling about defending mistakes we have nothing to do with, be it from our personal family or the nation we pertain to? Can understanding this phenomenon help reduce bigotry? Let’s analyze this and see what we can learn from it as individuals.

First of all, let’s defined the notion of ideological possession. Ideology, derived from the Greek idea and logos, refers to ‘a system of ideas and ideals, especially one which forms the basis of economic or political theory and policy’ (Oxford Languages). Examples of ideology include religions, political parties, or any set of cultural beliefs shared across a social group (e.g. nation, social class, ethnicity, etc.). To be ideologically possessed therefore means to feel attached to an ideology (and thereby to its social group) so much that you feel compelled to profess, defend, and put in application what the collective set of beliefs proclaims, irrespective of your own conscience or capacity to reason. Historically-speaking, the most common cases of ideological possessions are observed among fervent believer of a religion (Christianity and Islam being two great examples), with for instance the development of concept like the Holy War or the Crusades. Being ideologically possessed renders its subject unable to question their own life choices and above all, the basis of the ideology they follow. The reason why religion is behind a lot of such cases is also due to most religions forbidding the questioning of what its texts claim. This oftentimes inevitably results in people blindly following a doctrine which they would not necessarily agree with if they were to ever question it on the basis of logic, morality and fairness. Another major form of ideological possession is through politics – extreme cases including Nazism, White-Supremacy and ultranationalism, fascism, and nowadays certain leftist ideologies coming from people who misunderstand the notion of liberalism and what it actually stands for. Some of those ideologies are very old, but persist through time because of the role they play in the building of our social identity.

Polish social psychologist Henri Tajfel greatly contributed to defining the concept of social identity through his social identity theory (SIT), and highlighted the importance of us human beings belonging to a social group of any sort. SIT also puts an emphasis on our need to categorize ourselves as much as that of categorizing others, hence our tendency to exaggerate on one hand the differences between groups, and on the other, the similarities of things in the same group. This thought-pattern gives birth to dangerous ideologies like racism, sexism, homophobia, xenophobia, and overall create a slippery slope towards bigotry and prejudice in general (‘them vs. us’ mentality). Together with British social psychologist John Turner, Tajfel suggested that there are three mental processes involved in categorizing others as either “us” or “them” (in-group vs. out-group), and that these take place in a particular order. In a first time, we have social categorization, in which we proceed to placing the other in a category (gender, race, religion, profession, all depending on the given context and our respective perspective on the outside world). The second stage is that of social identification, in which we adopt the identity of the group we have categorized ourselves as belonging to. Last but not least, the final stage is that of social comparison, in which we proceed to comparing ourselves with others. It also turns out that in order for the self-esteem of the members of the in-group to be maintained, the group needs to compare favorably with other groups. PhD Dr. Saul McLeod explains that this “is critical to understanding prejudice, because once two groups identify themselves as rivals, they are forced to compete in order for the members to maintain their self-esteem”. This competition between groups therefore isn’t only a competition for external objects like territories, goods or resources, but also consists in a competition of identities.

Such mentalities, although being pure reflections of human nature, can produce disastrous outcomes of which the effects are rarely addressed and acknowledged. An example of such denial occurred on French radio station RTL on January 3rd, 2022, whereby guest Valérie Pécresse, French politician serving as President of the Regional Council of Île-de-France since 2015, claimed that colonialism and Nazism were very different, despite the almost identical basis of their ideology (race-based hierarchies). Her rationale? The Nazis committed a crime against humanity, while colonial Europe (her focus being on France), according to her, never did: “I don’t think we have to deconstruct the history of France […] There have been good and bad things, but rewriting history centuries later is an anachronism. […] In Algeria, there were indeed abuses, there were dark pages in the history of France that were written, but ‘crimes against humanity’, that’s what the Nazis and Hitler are accused of, and I don’t think we can talk about crimes against humanity.” While many can frown upon hearing European colonialism being compared to Nazi Germany, the comparison of these two ideologies is more than valid. Already in 1950, Aimé Césaire explained in his essay “Discourse on colonialism” that what Europe refuses to forgive Hitler is not necessarily the murder of mere human beings, but rather the murder of Caucasian human beings – in other terms, a crime against what is perceived as the ‘in-group’. Statements like that of Valérie Pécresse do nothing but provide confirmation in this respect, and show how still to this day, in 2022, most of France and its neighbors are unable to see the worth of a Black life as equal to that of a White one. Anne Frank’s life was not worth more than Sarah Baartman’s. Yet, we all know Anne Frank’s name, her story, the pain and anguish she went though, while Sarah Baartman’s suffering remains unmourned and unaddressed, brushed under a thick carpet of European denial. We can also notice how this notion of in-group superiority gets emphasized during times of unrest. The Ukrainian war going on as I write, is a prime example – and this in various ways. One major aspect is that of media focus (and indirectly the people’s focus). Our planet, since human beings have been around, has not known one single moment of peace. It therefore goes without saying that wars are (unfortunately) more common than we’d like to think, or that we’d like them to be. This also means that within our respective lifetimes, we were contemporary to more than one war. For instance, during the year I was born, a Civil war erupted in Afghanistan. A few years later, the United States were bombing Iraq. Fast-forwarding to today, I wouldn’t have enough fingers on my hands to count the amount of times innocent people died in such situations. And while you think I’m downplaying the current course of events, let me assert you that in fact, quite the opposite. My point is, if we chose to mourn the deaths of Ukrainian people, or raise funds for the survivors, or change our social-media profile pictures for the country’s flag, then we should do so for every single country at war. And if we don’t, then we need to acknowledge that we’re biased, and that we’re showing the world that we choose to prioritize people who look like us, because we feel like we can relate to them more than ‘out-group’ individuals. Now of course, most us do not realize this, as we’re often too caught-up in the superficiality of things to rather dig deeper and introspectively question our own choices and opinions. All this can in fact be summed up in three words: in-group bias. I could stop typing right here as these three words are enough to explain this article’s title but we haven’t explored the actual reasons and mechanisms behind this phenomenon.

In order to understand the mechanisms involved when defending our forefathers and peers, we need to analyze the nature of the relationships between ourselves and our fellow in-group members. As approached in my aforementioned article on in-group bias, a great part of our belonging to social groups of any kind can be explained through evolutionary psychology. Indeed, our need to pertain to a specific social group is rooted in survival instinct, without us even having to think about it. This means that building groups became a trait that human beings developed over time to survive, since living on our own is not something we’re built for – as much as some of us would like to be self-sufficient and independent, we remain deeply dependent of each other for a myriad of reasons. Pertaining to a group also means having to abide by a certain set of rules, and that’s where ideological possession comes into play. Because our belonging to a social group is central to our life, we place a great amount of efforts into making sure we do not lose this belonging. This can translate into taking some time out of our day to help the cause of the group, or practice an activity central to the group itself. This could also translate into defending the group blindly when the latter faces external threats or attacks. By defending the group and its ideology, not-only are we defending a part of our social self, but we’re also defending our belonging to this group against the threat of the latter being attacked or against us being casted out of it.

As to the notion of ideological possession itself, it is necessary to understand the extent this plays in our difficulty to admit the wrongdoings of our fellow in-group members, whether committed long ago or within our own lifetime. In the same manner our notion of identity gets in the way when assessing the morality of our peers’ behaviors or actions, our commitment to the ideologies we follow constitute an equally hefty obstacle. So where does this commitment take root? And why does it inhibit us to reason so much? Since time immemorial, humans have always lived by certain sets of rules, whether based on primal instinct, on philosophy, religion, law, or a mix of ‘all of the above’. Regardless, we humans have always tried to identify what is the best way to live life, and indirectly, how everyone else should live their own personal lives. Our desire to be right in this respect plays a key factor, as it serves as motor to not only preaching and exhorting the ideology in question, but also to sanctioning behaviors that go against it. This is something we frequently observe amongst religious groups of any kind. The Bible itself features several examples of that. In John 8 for instance, we can read the story of a woman allegedly caught in adultery, who the people are eager to punish by stoning. Fortunately for her, she will be spared as Jesus addresses the crowd, pointing out their hypocrisy: “Let him who is without sin among you be the first to cast a stone at her”. We can learn from this story that no matter what era or place, people have this tendency to attach a great value to the ideology they were brought up to abide by. In this biblical example, the ideology is Judaic law. We mentioned earlier how the sets of rules we humans go by could be based on religion, on law, etc. In this example, we’re dealing with law based on religion. This contributes to an even stronger obedience from the people who subscribe to it, as the fear-factor is doubled: on one side the fear of God, and on the other, the fear of the authorities.

We can, in conclusion, see how this phenomenon is far more complex as what we could initially think. Defending our forefathers, our peers, our in-group fellows, or anyone we see as belonging to the same group as ourselves, is something we often do without thinking. Because we identify with them, because we relate to them, we internalize their doings, their struggles, their actions, as if they were our own. However, as I always like to say, there is light at the end of the tunnel. Despite our natural human urges, our tendencies to gravitate around certain extremes, our desire to win every argument we’re in, we also possess the capability of introspection. This means that we’re all able to question our own behaviors as much as that of our peers, the same way we judge that of out-group members – and that often with great ease. So next time you feel tempted to defend someone, ask yourself why you do. Is it positive discrimination? Likewise, ask yourself why you do not feel inclined to defend someone. Is it because of preconceived ideas? We’d all be very surprised to discover how biased we all are. But we can change that, and it turns out that the first step is none but to question ourselves.

Sources

https://www.simplypsychology.org/social-identity-theory.html
https://pipanews.com/there-were-no-crimes-against-humanity-in-algeria-according-to-valerie-pecresse/
https://biblehub.com/john/8-1.htm