Groupthink: A Study in Self Delusion

By Christopher Booker

Book Overview

Bestselling author and columnist Christopher Booker considers whether we have found ourselves in the grip of self-delusion and the mentality of the crowd. Politics has always been colored by groupthink. Each political party of faction or grouping naturally has its own idea of how it sees the world more clearly than its rivals. Political decisions have ended badly because a little group of powerful men have collectively become so fixated on a single narrow view of what they hoped to achieve that they shut their minds to anything that contradicts it. Take for example the recklessly obsessive way in which George W. Bush and Tony Blair launched their invasion of Iraq in 2003. The rise of Islamic movements recently such as Al Qaeda or ISIS. This has shown us the power of groupthink at its ultimate extreme. So contagious was the power of that particular form of groupthink that thousands more would-be jihadists flocked to join the cause so intoxicated by the thought of randomly killing "infidels" that they were happy to commit suicide in pursuit of their fantasy cause. Global warming, political correctness ("the new age of thought-crime") racism, sexism, positive discrimination, hostility to religion and the United States of Europe are all issues investigated. Christopher Booker drills down to look at recent examples of groupthink: Charlie Hebdo, the collective emotion on the death of Princess Diana. Here, he argues, emotion is detached from its proper object to become a thing in itself. It is only by obtaining some sort of insight into the psychology of crowds that it can be understood how powerless they are to hold any opinions other than those that are imposed upon them.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1472959051
• ISBN13: 9781472959058
• Release Date: May 2020
• Publisher: Bloomsbury Continuum
• Length: 240 Pages
• Weight: 1.10 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.1" x 6.3" x 9.3"

Customer Reviews

Clear, concise and iconoclastic.

The author brings an insightful mix of current events, historical realities, Aristotelean philosophy and psychology together into a very easy read. It comes with some surprises, both good and disappointing. For example in a book that warns of the dangers of the herd that uncritically accepts false ideas as "facts," and doesn't bother to check the veracity of the "facts" they repeat, the author inadvertently falls into a common, but completely false, groupthink myth of believing that "Few episodes in the history of science, for instance, are more famous than the treatment accorded to Galileo for his questioning of the Church's 'consensus' that the Earth was the centre of the universe and that the sun moved around it." Oh the irony! Elsewhere, Booker reiterates other popular, but factually false, notions such as recent events in the US evidenced by "…repeated incidents where trigger-happy white police were shooting black men for what appeared to be the most spurious reasons…" The astute reader will find other examples of groupthink, some more embarrassing than others. These factual errors notwithstanding, the book is important and timeless, and sadly, written just before the COVID fiasco about which I am sure that the author would have had much to say. Sadly, again, Booker is no longer with us, having passed in 2019. At only 200 pages, this is a fast and good read. Important concepts are generally handled in an objective manner. Some of the concepts in the book will be offensive to less mature adults, and obviously offensive to those who are comfortable with uncritical groupthink. For critical readers, the work will be refreshing and useful as a reference.