Political riots raise important moral questions. When we see or hear about a riot, we are prompted to consider whether the cause is just and whether rioting is a justified means of protest. Some believe that all rioting is wrong, while others think that it can be permissible or even required under certain conditions. These are difficult questions. Underlying them, however, is the assumption that rioters are morally responsible for their actions. This assumption may seem obvious, but I want to suggest that our intuitions about riot responsibility and the related findings of social psychology are surprisingly difficult to reconcile with our best theories of moral responsibility.
Two Types of Rioters
I’ll here focus on the January 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol and assume that it was an instance of blameworthy rioting. Now consider the following first-person accounts from two rioters:
“We start walking up to the Capitol, and we get the news that Pence betrayed us. He had way more power, and he wasn’t willing to exercise it. And when Pence betrayed us is when we decided to storm the Capitol. (…) We just pushed and pushed and pushed and pushed, and yelled ‘Go!’ and yelled ‘Charge!’ And on and on and on, we just pushed and pushed and pushed—and we got in.” (Jenny Cudd, recorded live video)
“Why did I go up to the terrace? Why did I enter the Capitol building? I don’t have a good answer. (…) There were easily over half a million people there all pushing toward the building, and I was caught up in that. There was someone with a bullhorn urging everyone to keep moving forward. The entire experience was surreal. I trusted the President and that was a big mistake.” (Leonard Gruppo, in a letter to Chief Judge Beryl A. Howell)
These descriptions exemplify two ideal types of riot participation. Jenny Cudd presents herself as someone who endorses the cause of the riot and acts with resolve. (She even brought a bulletproof sweatshirt.) Leonard Gruppo, by contrast, portrays himself as confused, pressured, and later regretful. If we take their words at face value, Cudd is what I’ll call a Diehard, who acts in line with deeply held values, while Gruppo is a Tagalong, who lacks this kind of commitment and is swept up in the moment.
Even if one were to doubt the sincerity of Gruppo’s account, research in social psychology strongly supports the idea of Tagalongs. Crowd psychologists have long argued that dynamics such as in-group/out-group conflict, perceived anonymity, and the rapid emergence of new norms amidst chaos can lead people to act in ways they would not normally act and do not fully endorse.
The Moral Responsibility of Rioters
The distinction between Diehards and Tagalongs seems morally significant, but should it shape our responsibility attributions? I want to highlight three intuitive judgments related to the distinction:
Asymmetry: Diehards and Tagalongs are not blameworthy in the same way.
Asymmetry reflects that we care about not just what rioters do but also about what their actions reveal about them. This concern is clearly reflected in court proceedings, where judges often examine defendants’ backgrounds to determine whether they acted on firmly held convictions or were swept up by the crowd. This is typically treated as an aggravating or mitigating factor.
No Excuse: Crowd dynamics are not sufficient for moral excuse.
While the social context may help explain the behavior of Tagalongs, it does not excuse it. Few would accept the idea that being swept up in a riot is comparable to acting under hypnosis or in a state of psychosis. In this vein, Tagalongs are clearly expected to acknowledge their wrongdoing and express remorse.
Scope: We blame both Diehards and Tagalongs for what they did and the evaluative content of their actions.
We blame both Diehards and Tagalongs for what they actually did and for the evaluative outlook expressed by their actions. Importantly, Tagalongs are not just blameworthy for negligently allowing themselves to be swept up by the crowd or for being suggestible in general. That would let a Tagalong like Gruppo off the hook too easily. It seems then that we hold them accountable not just for negligence or suggestibility but for having helped realize and give voice to certain values.
These three judgments, I take it, have intuitive appeal and are reflected in both public discourse and much judicial reasoning. Yet they are difficult to reconcile with leading philosophical theories of moral responsibility.
The Deep Self and its Limit
For reasons of space, I’ll mainly focus on the deep self-view of moral responsibility. This view holds that agents are morally responsible only when their actions express evaluative outlooks grounded in their “deep selves” (roughly, their endorsed values or stable evaluative dispositions). The deep self-view offers a natural explanation of Asymmetry, insofar as Diehards fit this model neatly. They are blameworthy exactly because the riots allow them to express their deep selves. But Tagalongs pose a problem. Since they act in ways that are out of character or not endorsed, deep self-theory predicts that they are not proper targets of blame. This clearly contradicts No Excuse.
Other views face different problems. They may be able to satisfy Asymmetry but only by violating No Excuse by wrongly suggesting that Tagalongs cannot be blamed or Scope by wrongly suggesting that Tagalongs are to blame only for their suggestibility. Alternatively, they violate Asymmetry by predicting that there is no morally significant difference between Diehards and Tagalongs. In short, it seems that we must either revise our intuitions about riot cases or rethink our theories of moral responsibility.
The Extended Deep Self-View
In ongoing work, I develop a revision of the deep self-view to better capture moral responsibility in socially dynamic contexts like riots. What follows is a brief sketch of that view.
In a nutshell, I suggest that moral responsibility depends on the expression of evaluative outlooks, regardless of whether they are grounded in individual psychology or in social interaction, so long as the grounding supports the core functions of blame. This Extended Deep Self-View preserves the core insight of the deep self-tradition—that responsibility tracks the expression of evaluative outlooks—while extending it to socially scaffolded forms of agency, like that displayed by Tagalongs.
More precisely, I argue that riots often involve what I call socially grounded evaluative outlooks in the sense that what rioters take to be salient or significant is no longer grounded in their deep selves but ongoing social interactions with the other rioters. This, then, determines how they act and shapes the evaluative content of their actions. In this sense, Tagalongs can help realize an evaluative outlook and express it in their actions, even if they do not endorse it and later regret it.
This view explains the three judgments in the following way. First, in terms of No Excuse, the view differs from the traditional deep self-view by explicitly noting that the influence of crowd dynamics does not excuse Tagalongs. That their actions were socially scaffolded and not deeply held does not mean that they did not express an evaluative outlook. Second, in terms of Scope, the view suggests that both Diehards and Tagalongs are blameworthy for what they did and for the evaluative content of their actions. Again, blameworthiness tracks expression, not origin. Finally, concerning Asymmetry, my view suggests that the way in which evaluative outlooks are grounded will impact how it is appropriate for us to blame people. Very briefly, we must distinguish between the different functions or points of blaming people (e.g. moral address and relationship alteration) and then show that these functions apply differently to Diehards and Tagalongs, based on how the evaluative outlooks they express are grounded.
Blaming Rioters
When we see or hear about a riot, we are struck by the evaluative outlook expressed by the rioters. When that outlook is morally objectionable, blame is appropriate. But, on the line of argument sketched above, the exact form that blame should take depends on how that outlook is grounded. I think this is key to understanding the difference between Diehards and Tagalongs.
When Diehards participate in a riot, their actions express an evaluative outlook rooted in their deep self. Jenny Cudd’s actions during the January 6 attack reveal something about who she is. This warrants certain kinds of moral address (“You must become a better person!”) and may justify ruptures in our relationships (“I’ll have nothing to do with you!”).
With Tagalongs, things are different. Their actions may express the same evaluative outlook, but here they emerge from complex social dynamics. Leonard Gruppo is still blameworthy for his actions on January 6, but in a different way. If we take his account at face value, it would be inappropriate to blame him as if his actions revealed something fundamental about his character. Instead, appropriate blaming attitudes must be sensitive to how his agency was socially scaffolded. We might demand that he disavow his actions, or withhold trust in future politically charged contexts, but he does not appear to deserve the same kind of condemnation that Cudd does.
This is ongoing work, and many details still need to be spelled out. In any case, I hope this blog post has shown that moral philosophy has much to gain from examining socially complex situations like riots and that our attributions of responsibility are more sensitive to social dynamics than standard theories often acknowledge.
Nicolai Knudsen
Nicolai Knudsen is Associate Professor of Philosophy at Aarhus University, Denmark. He works on social ontology, phenomenology, and moral philosophy. He is currently Principal Investigator of two research projects: The Glue of Society (GLUE, funded by the European Research Council), which investigates the social ontology of social cohesion; and Hybrid Agency and Moral Responsibility (HARM, funded by the Independent Research Fund Denmark), which explores collective responsibility and artificial intelligence.
