500 years, two technologies, similar chaos

1520s

In Germany, respect for traditional authority figures—the Pope, the Emperor, and other nobles—has broken down under an assault led by Martin Luther. Into that vacuum of authority hundreds of voices arise, each contending with the other. The vicious attacks made initially against the Pope are now turned by various Protestant factions against other Protestant factions, with verbal violence more than occasionally turning into physical violence. No one, including Luther himself, is excluded from the most extreme accusations and absurd slanders. All this vitriol is spread by a new technology—the printing press—which accelerates the spread of lies, rumours, calumnies, and hysteria of every sort. Where before there was one truth, now there are hundreds of truths, or none at all.

2020s

Throughout the West, respect for traditional authority figures has broken down. Ten thousand voices contend, with the same accusations—traitor! racist! fascist! etc.—hurled by opposing factions at each other. Verbal violence more than occasionally turns into physical violence. No public figure is excluded from the most extreme accusations and absurd slanders, and even private persons are not safe from attack. A new technology—social media—accelerates the spread of lies, rumours, calumnies, and hysteria of every sort. Where before there was a rough standard for establishing the truth, now there are hundreds of truths, or none at all, and no agreed standard for judging.

The authorities who lost control in each of these cases were different, of course. In the first case, the corruptions of the Papacy in Rome and the Church in general are well-known: ersatz “indulgences” and relics foisted on an ignorant populace and used to raise funds; scandalous personal behaviour and extravagant expenditures by popes, cardinals, and their monarchical retinues; and bad behaviour in local areas by priests, monks, friars, and nuns who were ill-suited to a religious vocation. Such criticisms were well-known, and had been documented by writers like Chaucer a hundred years earlier, but it was Luther who brought things to a crisis with his defiance of Rome and the Pope’s excommunication. The nobility, meanwhile, were doing their usual work of soaking the peasantry while they lived in luxury. Five centuries later in the post-WWII West, the orthodoxies that would be overthrown were more diffuse: a media elite who dominated a largely centralized system of major newspapers and major TV and radio networks; a political elite who worked hand-in-hand with this media elite; and a general agreement that some form of capitalism (with a larger welfare state favoured by the centre-left and a smaller one favoured by the centre-right) would lead to prosperity and progress for almost everyone. These orthodoxies and their representatives began to lose credibility in the 1980s when a “globalized” economy featuring free-trade agreements, fewer regulations of the financial system, and the exportation of manufacturing and heavy industries to developing countries where labour was much cheaper. The result was the rise of a new billionaire class whose wealth was generated by manipulation of financial instruments like hedge funds, while the middle and working classes saw their income and wealth stagnating or falling. These trends were only exacerbated by the rise of internet billionaires around the turn of the century. Despite their policy differences, all the mainstream political parties participated in this massive shift of wealth.

In both cases, the peasants (16th century) and the working-class (21st century) rose up in revolt, with violence in the earlier period (the Peasants’ War) exceeding—so far—violence in our own time (the truckers’ protests, the jaunes gilets in France, the January 6th attack on the Capitol in 2021). These revolts against the elites spilled over into attacks on other perceived enemies like the Jews (16th century) and the Jews and the immigrants (21st century). (The 21st century movements of immigrants into the prosperous nations of Europe and North America were impelled, of course, by that same “globalized” economy that led to soaring wealth and income gaps, job losses, and economic stagnation in Europe and North America.) In both cases, too, the earlier proponents of change (Luther, Reagan Republicans) were pushed aside by more radical voices. As in the French, Russian, and Chinese Revolutions, yesterday’s revolutionaries became today’s counter-revolutionaries and enemies of the people.

It is tempting (as always, given the limited perspective of a single human lifetime) to see these two cases as separate. I prefer to see them as parts of the same story, in which civilization undergoes periodic corrections or adjustments—diastolic / systolic alternations—either when the established order’s corruption becomes unbearably oppressive, or when the chaos has gone on too long and most people are willing to give up some freedoms in exchange for peace, order, and stability.

My question: Is this process simply an endless oscillation, similar to the Greeks’ idea of a repeating move from monarchy to tyranny to oligarchy to democracy and back again? Or are we making slow progress toward a society in which both the oppressive inclinations of elites and the violent reactions of the masses are contained within some kind of acceptable range?