Lynching in the 21st century!

Our world has become one which is ruled by mobs. We thought we had cancelled mob behaviours when we started engaging in intellectual discourses and discarded our weapons for civilised dialogues. We were made to believe so. The muffled undertones of passive-aggressiveness were always there in the background. It never really disappeared. In those days, the dominant ruling forces called it resistance, reformation or revolution. We learnt that numbers matter and recruiting the masses worked best to overthrow a seemingly impregnable and cruel regime. Most new religions came about through these ways - show the unthinking inebriated public the virtues and purpose of existence, riled their emotions to unite them against a particular cause, sometimes a self-serving one. The major Abrahamic religions began thus, creating a sense of fear, perpetually assuming that they would be besieged.

Fast forward to the present time. We thought that in modern times, with the ease of information at our disposal, we felt that we would be widespread in the depth of our knowledge and be empowered to choose what is best for us. We were never so wrong.

The law of the jungle and the Neanderthal code of ethics, if there ever was, is the law that prevails in cyberspace. The loudest, the most devious and the most insincere, wins the arguments hands down. Anyone who does not conform to the voice of the majority is mercilessly crucified. The 'voice of the majority' is not actually the plea of the most, but narratives of ringmasters of who are paid tools of their puppetmasters with vested interests. If in the medieval times, muscle power, blood and gore put the weak statehood in submission, modern-day cyber warriors do the same through cyberbullying, mass hypnotism and peddling of fake news. Oft-repeated nonsense gains credibility via mere repetition without giving opportunity for critical assessment. Anyone who even utters whispers of differing viewpoint is instantaneously shot down through cybertrooping activities, public shaming and cancel culture. Lynch mobs on social media are out for blood to sow communal hatred, assault on scientific knowledge and insult to our thinking faculty.

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