Flying Monkeys

 

After a couple of weeks in which everyone seemed to be coming out in favour of the convoy protesters, we begin to see the counter-protests and the aggressively hostile tweets appear.

These counter-protesters are examples of the psychological phenomenon called “flying monkeys.” Watching them is informative.

These are people who could not legitimately expect to advance by their merits, but are determined to advance nonetheless. So their strategy is to seek preferment by showing unreasonable and unreasoning loyalty to whomever they think has the power to grant such preferment. They therefore become useful tools in the hands of any tyrant. Rosenkrantz and Guildenstern were Shakespearean examples.

You can almost see this in images of their little protests. “Soy boys”; “beta males.” Bitter, unattractive women. The mere physical contrast with the convoy supporters is striking. For one thing, they seem uniformly shorter.