Cultism and democracy
The political environment in Pakistan has always been propitious for cult worship and conspiracy theories.
Due to elite capture of society, the people have been deprived of their due share in the national economic pie.
According to a UN Fund Report of 2017 and ILO Report 2019, a large segment of Pakistan’s population (63%) constitutes a young cohort (i.e.between 15 and 33 years of age) out of which 7.81% are unemployed.
The young and unemployed do not have jobs but everyone somehow owns a cell phone.
Frustrations with an unequal society and the state’s apathy towards the jobless have created a youth bulge that is seething with anger at the visible symbols of state governance including established political dynasties, business oligarchs and the traditional elite.
The disempowered people, including a large cohort of jobless youths, hankered for a messiah who like the proverbial Godot would descend from heavens to deliver them from the crutches of the corrupt elite.
The seedbed of hatred with the established polity and its symbols sprouted hate narratives that needed a charismatic voice to convert into a national narrative.
That promised messiah was found in the shape of Imran Khan, who with his cricketing successes and cancer hospital had secured a hold over the public imagination.
Despite several failed attempts at political power, he was in the political wilderness until noticed by the establishment as a viable alternative to the misgoverning traditional political elite.
Like all parvenu political forces, Imran Khan’s PTI and its establishment allies forged an alliance to conduct a hybrid experiment.
The experience could have succeeded had it not been for the political naiveté and mishandling of the economy.
Imran Khan’s besetting sin was the lack of performance and delivery on the governance front – due to his flawed understanding that governance is limited to accountability only.
Cults are defined by Jonica Carlton Best as groups of people who have similar beliefs and routines that others find bizarre.
According to Tajfel and Turner’s Social Identity Theory, humans need to be respected and therefore to ennoble their state of existence bond into revered group identities.
For such members of cults, the group’s identity and that of their leader becomes a sacrosanct notion that needs to be protected from external assaults through aggressive defence.
According to Turner and Reynolds, the members of cults would go willingly along with conformism and compliance as a hedge against the cognitive dissonance experienced because of differences in group beliefs and the reality.
By seeking affirmation of their beliefs from fellow cult members sharing the same beliefs, an echo chamber of delusions is deliberately nurtured, which regards a contrary view from someone outside the cult as sacrilege.
For cultists the fidelity to their cult transcends all other affiliations. Nothing, for instance, could explain PTI supporters’ vociferous defence of the sacrilegious behaviour at the Holy Prophet’s (PBUH) mosque in Madinah, where PTI activists chanted slogans and hurled abuse against their opponents.
A bounded rationality environment operates for cult followers, where they are only fed the cult’s propaganda, restricting the thought space to a given narrative.
Minds are then moulded by deliberately suppressing critical thinking and alternate reasoning.
Solomon Asch’s famous experiment where the cult members preferred to suppress truth deliberately in order to be socially included in the in group clearly points out the fact that the cults thrive on “otherisation” of out groups.
A careful survey of social media traffic after the Vote of No Confidence shows that the charged cadres of PTI are lapping up the narrative of their leadership without critical inquiry, and are willingly ignoring visible yet contrary truths.
For the first time in the country’s history, political cultism is negating all that democracy stands for, i.e. respect for the constitution, political accommodation and regard for the institutions.
The cultists are not sparing even revered institutions and their leadership which, in their view, now stand accused of protecting the constitution.
Funnily they are angry at institutions and their leadership for their admirable fidelity to constitutionalism!
Facts are being deliberately distorted to defy constitutionalism in a quest for political martyrdom.
In any other country, such a cult would be treated as a threat to democracy and measures would be taken to insulate the impressionable youth and gullible population from the echo chamber of delusions being created on social media platforms.
One way to protect from the assault of cultism on democracy is to present counter narratives on the same propaganda mediums to rebut the steady flow of falsehoods and half-truths.
Short, summarized presentations on easy-to-understand facts about the economy, constitutional realities of vote of no confidence, accountability, harmful conspiracy theories and perils of populism need to be disseminated through all social media platforms as well as mainstream media channels.
This initiative should be accompanied by a genuine package of reforms and incentives targeting jobless youths and impoverished segments of population.
Pakistan’s new government needs to understand that old ways of governance and politics would not work in the future.
The new administration should therefore trim its governance sails to the prevailing public mood and sentiment.
In the meanwhile, the cultism needs to be discouraged – while promoting the democratic values of rule of law, institutionalism, merit and accountability.
How to insulate the youth from the insidious wave of cultism to help them appreciate a true democratic ethos is a vital and urgent objective.
—Concluded.
— The writer is the Acting President Islamabad Policy Research Institute.
