Nothing is more foreign to public intelligence than the systematic disqualification of anger. It is necessary to dismiss both the triviality of the saying “anger is bad advice” and the idea that it opens the doors to violence and irrationality.
Aristotle, the founder of political thought, was aware of this. Far from being a blind impulse, opposed to reason, anger is the immediate reaction to a public act of depreciation and unjustified contempt that affects us. It is the reaction of a being or a group whose existence and dignity have been publicly contested and violated. The same goes for indignation, felt in the face of undeserved “misfortunes.”
Therefore, anger and indignation reflect a vivid experience of injustice. Indignation, in particular, presupposes the absence of any personal interest. It is felt by those who, without suffering from injustice themselves, do not accept that their fellow humans should be victims of it.
The sense of justice (and injustice) does not stem from personal injury but from attention and sensitivity to others. Anger thus reflects a fundamental relationship with alterity and responds to the law’s failure to ensure justice within a political community. In this case, according to Aristotle, it is not contrary to reason but involves the mutual recognition of beings who share a common world.
One can understand the relevance of these remarks and the complexity of the problem: most collective protest movements that have emerged recently are linked to expressions of anger in the face of perceived injustice, lack of recognition, or denial of equal dignity.
Whether it’s the yellow vests, Black Lives Matter, or #MeToo (among others), the question is how to move from “just anger” to citizen engagement in the city so that it does not turn into violence. In other words, how to politically develop demands and claims arising from collective anger and indignation? Because they are not immediately political: they are, under certain conditions, only a prerequisite.
The failure of the yellow vests movement
The yellow vests movement is emblematic of a wave that did not succeed, due to a lack of structured organization and coherence, in finding a political solution. The confusion and lack of clear expression have trapped the movement in an indefinable gray zone where the exacerbation of feelings of injustice, impotent anger, turns into violent resentment.
However, it has also led to initiatives (lists of grievances, grand debate, Citizen’s Convention for Climate) that have fallen short, due to condescending power that stifled anything that could have integrated these initiatives into public life. This has reinforced frustrations, impotent anger, and fueled populist capture.
The success of #MeToo
A different case is #MeToo: lived testimonies, life stories, have multiplied and spread in an unforeseen way, successfully weaving a common “us.” Stemming from the sharing of sensitive experiences, it has also succeeded in generalizing by bringing forward, beyond violence against women, a major political issue: that of male domination.
The Mazan rape trial would not have had the same impact if #MeToo had not inscribed it within the realm of public reason. This does not mean that the problem of male domination is solved, but it requires, politically speaking, to be treated as such in its various aspects (sexual, social, economic, educational, etc.).
The risk of capture by populism
There is an immense reservoir of anger everywhere, not only in France, which, unable to transform into political energy, is instrumentalized by populisms and transformed into a conglomerate of anxieties, frustrations, hatred, and rage.
Transformed into anti-political furies, they aggregate and crystallize to the point of endangering not only public debate but democracy as an ethos, as the foundation of certain shared values: concern for justice, equal dignity, recognition of the other as a “fellow” (not necessarily someone who resembles us).
The world according to Donald Trump has brought the capture of fear, anger, and resentment to its peak. The brutalization and violence of power have sought to turn hatred – which is not anger – into an essential element of confrontations and polarizations that have nothing to do with democratic conflict.
The success of horizontal resistance
Until recently, it seemed that the violence carried by the Trumpist power knew no limits, starting with the ones that public debate norms could impose. The recent events in Minneapolis showed that this was not the case and that there were forms of indignation capable of standing in its way. It was indeed the citizens’ refusal to accept violence and injustice done to others that enabled them to resist the brutality and inhuman practices of ICE agents (immigration police).
Interestingly, the forms initiated by citizens did not seek to counter violence with violence or to face it in a completely irrelevant manner through rationality of debate or discussion. As Spinoza wrote, one only fights a passion with a stronger passion. In this case, it was an “expansive” passion, one that increases the collective power to act, that prevailed over hatred.
Furthermore, human solidarity – this form of political friendship – has invented unprecedented modes of horizontal resistance, organized and relayed by citizen networks. But these methods are also the heirs of a political culture and a practice of acting in common anchored in history, proven social and political practices. That is why they were able to reverse the balance of power and push back the power’s violence. This might provide reasons not to despair of the democratic resistance potential arising from anger and indignation.
