Higgins frenzy exposes mob culture, says Joe Hildebrand

The Brittany Higgins saga has led to many casualties and there is one part of it that needs to be called out.

COMMENT

In the long and largely boring history of Australian politics, nothing has electrified Canberra like the incredibly salacious and yet terribly tragic Brittany Higgins saga.

There has been gossipy scandal and innuendo surrounding innumerable PMs and MPs over the years and there has been high political drama such as the Dismissal or conscription.

But no issue has so fused the personal with the national, the intimate with the public, as the tsunami of claim and counterclaim, of ferocity and suffering, that was unleashed when the Higgins story broke.

And like any tidal wave in a highly populated area it now appears clear that there will be many casualties.

There is no need here to armchair quarterback the details of the allegations, the media firestorm and court case that followed, the public inquiry that excoriated the investigation and prosecution and the excruciatingly embarrassing mountain of material that is now being drip fed to the media.

All that needs to be offered is a reminder of Newton’s Third Law of Motion, which states that for every action there is always an equal and opposite reaction.

This is not to attack any individual journalists involved in the breaking of Brittany Higgins’ story. Exposing improper conduct in government is perhaps the most important role the media has.

I would never criticise Brittany Higgins herself, who has clearly been through the wringer. Picture: NCA NewsWire / Gary Ramage

Likewise the brutal and bloody art of His Majesty’s Opposition is a cornerstone of the Westminster system of democracy that has served us so well. As ugly as it appears at times, the principle of having a minority party whose sole purpose is to find fault with the majority elected government is arguably the most fundamental failsafe to democracy.

And lastly I would never criticise Brittany Higgins herself, who has clearly been through the wringer no matter what your politics are. For the record, I do not disbelieve her central claims – any more than I could possibly believe them in the absence of a legal judgment.

Instead there is something bigger to blame, and that is something that does deserve condemnation. In fact it deserves obliteration.

And that is the politics of the mob.

Bruce Lehrmann walks out of Sydney’s supreme court in March. Picture: NCA NewsWire/ Flavio Brancaleone

There have always been mobs in politics. Roman senators once feared them and employed them in equal measure; mobs propelled the bloodlust of the guillotine during the French Revolution and the bloody coup of the Russian Bolsheviks more than a century later.

But the most important thing to know is that the mob is not the masses. The loud and angry pitchfork-wielding crowd is not the majority, nor even the common people.

Despite the propaganda of the time and since, the French and Russian revolutions were driven by extremists not against tyrants but against democratic processes that were already being put in place by regimes that had been scared into submission.

The extremists in France and Russia who flailed and wailed against the system weren’t fighting extremism on the other side – the king and the tsar had long fallen by the time the guillotine came out or the Bolsheviks waged war – but against moderate and pragmatic reforms that were already underway.

In other words they were fighting progress, destroying good things that were being done because they wanted everything more, yet all it resulted in was more destruction.

Because that is the only power the mob has: Never to create but only to destroy. A screaming crowd cannot build a castle, it can only burn it down.

Today, even in this supposedly enlightened age, mobs still rampage except instead of wielding pitchforks they use hashtags, and this is where everything went so horribly wrong for Brittany Higgins and those around her.

I would never criticise Brittany Higgins herself, who has clearly been through the wringer. Picture: David Gray / AFP

Swept up in the conviction that their cause was pure beyond reproach and the belief that the crowd was on their side, there was no pause for reflection, no sense of restraint or proportionality in their approach. No considered or wider world view.

Indeed, if anything the text messages and conversations that have come to light seem to reveal the 21st century version of the furious one-eyed hatred and bloodlust that drove the revolutionaries of centuries past.

And yet after all the chanting is over and all the smoke has cleared, the only careers imperilled are their own and the only government they are hurting is the one supposedly on their side.

Because when you run with the mob the only thing ever achieved is destruction. Sometimes your enemy’s, more often your own. No good can ever come of it.

And if any good can ever come of this sorry saga perhaps it is that activists and journalists and politicians will think twice before mindlessly trying to tear down not only the institutions that keep our society civilised but the very human beings around them.