Everywhere I look, I see the magic number: 3%. On the right, a whole quasi-militia movement is named that. On the left, activists report “it takes 3.5% of a population engaged in sustained nonviolent resistance to topple brutal dictatorships.” Nassim Taleb argues that once an intransigent minority reaches “3 or 4%” of the total population, the latter will “have to submit to their preferences.”
But it seems like everyone is intransigent now — and I believe technology has a lot to do with that.
The causality is pretty straightforward. Social media acts as a massive collective Sorting Hat, silently assigning most of us to filter bubbles wherein our beliefs and biases are rarely challenged. News (or “news”) sources rise up to cater to those filter bubbles, powered by tech’s ability to provide cheap global distribution to many millions to anyone with a blog and a knack for clickbait headlines.
Then, slowly, these isolated groups do what isolated groups do: bit by bit, degree by degree, they — and, especially, their attitudes towards other groups — become more extreme. Increasing extremity in one group provokes a backlash of counter-extremity in other groups, and the vicious downward spiral continues. Thanks, social media!
Obviously this doesn’t happen to everyone. But remember those links above: you only need 3% of a population to be intransigent activists to have a massive effect on society, on the scale of overthrowing entire governments. But the assumption there is that there’s only one hard-core 3% movement, versus a bland majority and a small oppressive cabal. What happens when we have two hardcore intransigent 3% movements? Or three? Or more?
What happens if and when one of them is fascist?
This seems like a good time to point out that both the right and the left claim they’re fighting fascism. Right-wingers in America and Europe claim the West is at war with fascist radical Islam in the form of ISIS/Daesh and other extremists — “Salafascists” to use Taleb’s term.
