Bandwagon Effect

The Bandwagon Effect refers to the general human tendency to acquire a particular style, behaviour or attitude just because everybody else is doing it. You will find a lot of young boys adopting a bizarre-looking hairstyle just because the other boys are doing it. Quite many people begin to support one particular leader or party merely because that leader or party is popular currently.

Beliefs, ideas or fads acquire force in proportion to the number of people who accept them. In other words, as more people come to believe in something, others hop on the bandwagon regardless of underlying evidence of its veracity.

People do this because of the general human tendency to conform. In politics, people tend to vote for the most popular party just because it is the most popular party. In fact, it may be the worst party for the future of the country. But people want to be on the winning popular side, whatever the side actually is. Popularity has a diabolic appeal. It enchants and blinds people. Otherwise Hitler would not have been able to extinguish millions of lives so easily.

The bandwagon effect works not only in politics. Economists tell us that people buy a commodity just because many others buy it. Recently the jewelleries in Kerala were crowded with people who wanted to exchange their old ornaments with 916-hallmarked ones. They ignored the threats of a pandemic and rushed to the jewelleries just because their neighbours were doing it. Some clever jewellers had let loose a rumour that old gold would not be of much value sooner than later. Creating a bandwagon is as easy as that. A rumour is enough.

You can get a whole lot of people to drink the urine of an animal or eat its dung merely by convincing them that the excreta has medicinal values. Better, speak about the religious sanctity of the faeces. Bandwagons are led by clever clowns.

Dan Rice

The bandwagon was a carriage for a band during a parade or in a circus. In 1848, a famous circus clown named Dan Rice used his bandwagon to gain public attention for his political campaign when he contested for the American President’s post. The bandwagon didn’t carry him to the White House but it was very popular during the election campaign. It became so popular that many other politicians strove for a seat on Rice’s wagon if only to draw the attention of the gazing public.

American presidential election campaigns are much like circuses, says renowned American philosopher Barrows Dunham. They require the candidates to be acrobats, clowns and medicine men. The 1944 campaigns had some additional ingredients, thanks to Hitler’s fascist bandwagon. “There was a wildness in the acrobatics, a malice in the clowning, a mendacity in the medicine selling.”

On one of those days Dunham was attending a dinner party. “Yes, they get in everywhere,” the guest next to him said. A lady responded to it saying, “They all want jobs in industry nowadays. They don’t know their place anymore.”

“Who?” Dunham asked. The lady refused to answer that and looked at the philosopher pityingly.

“Yes, they get in everywhere,” another guest said.

“Who?” Dunham repeated his question.

“Why, Jews, of course. They get in everywhere.”

“Is there any reason why they shouldn’t get in?” Dunham asked.

Absolute silence followed. A pregnant silence. Cowardice and hatred.

America had hopped on to the Hitlerian bandwagon of hatred.

Most political bandwagons are fuelled by hatred of a particular people. Hatred is one of the most potent and bewitching of all human emotions. People love to hate those who are different from them in some ways. Politicians know this truth and use it effectively to create marauding bandwagons.

Hatred is the weak person’s most convenient tool. It conceals the underlying cowardice, the fear of the other. As Bernard Shaw put it, “Hatred is the coward’s revenge for being intimidated.” Hitler was a blatant coward. Unpublished letters and a diary written by veterans of Hitler’s wartime regiment, along with many other documents available now, reveal the Fuhrer as a man driven by cowardice that wore the mask of hatred. His fellow soldiers in the regiment shunned him as a “rear area pig” who kept himself as far away from danger as possible. Hitler would have done better for mankind if he had carried a whisky flask in his belt instead of race pride in his ruthless bandwagon.

There are many bandwagons that march gloriously on our own highways and byways. There are enormous populations that have suddenly realised that their religion or nation or culture or something of the sort is in danger from a perceived enemy. Scratch their nationalism and you will find cowardice and hatred bleeding out.

We alone can solve this problem of bandwagons. We should refuse to jump on to bandwagons without assessing their worth and utility. We should know that bandwagons are often led by clowns in motley with vested interests. We should be stern critics of the antics on display in bandwagons. Most importantly, we should not sync the filth in our own hearts with that on display in the bandwagons, however charming the exhibit on the bandwagon may look.

 

PS. This is powered by Blogchatter’s #BlogchatterA2Z Challenge.

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