The Wednesday Letter #192 - 11/1/2023

THIS WEEK: Free Speech and Street Mobs; The Foreign Policy of Complacency; War Scenarios; WeWork; S&P Sectors Update; GeoReads #11; Tweets & Charts.

FREE SPEECH AND STREET MOBS

We wrote in The Boom in Certainty that the spread of certainty had become contagious after the pandemic, and that some people were very adept at whipping up a street mob through social media. The main characteristic of a mob is its sense of certainty, the notion that its frenzy and actions are fully justified, even if only temporarily. With the war in Gaza, we face a heightened risk of mob incitement again, be it motivated by antisemitism, anti-Muslim sentiment or other. The latest most visible such attempts have been antisemitic but in theory, all minorities are vulnerable to the normalization of mob incitement. We write the following in an agnostic mindset, as today's inciters could become tomorrow's targets and would then become thankful that some reasonable limitations are placed on their tormentors before they in turn raise a mob against them.

We all know that no one can yell "fire!" in a theater if there is no fire, and then defend himself by invoking t…