From #MeToo to Black Lives Matter, COVID lockdowns to climate change, modern political culture is increasingly driven by manias, so argues author of We Need To Talk About Kevin and political commentator Lionel Shriver. Shriver argues that these collective hysterias share a dangerous pattern: rational debate is shut down, dissent is punished, and conformity becomes a survival strategy. Shriver explores how intelligent societies can succumb to irrational movements, why labels like 'left' and 'right' have lost meaning, and why manias are not a partisan problem but a human one.

You’ve stated that your book Mania was inspired by recent social manias. Can you explain what these are and how they catch on in society?

The #MeToo movement definitely had a manic element. It was striking partly because of how international it became and how quickly it got out of control. It started as a way for women with legitimate grievances to have their voices heard, but it rapidly became a requirement, as a female, to have a grievance and to have been abused in some way. What qualified as abuse began to spread until it included a bad date, for which men should be shunned and their careers ended.

The Black Lives Matter movement was established in 2013, if I recall correctly, but it was only in 2020 that it exploded. That was literally an overnight phenomenon. Within a day or two of George Floyd’s murder, you had people trooping by the tens of thousands down the street, even outside of the United States, where it had nothing to do with them. It was really disconcerting.

COVID definitely had a manic element. We got with the program way too fast. I was shocked by how readily a country like the UK simply rolled over and abdicated every civil right they had previously considered their birthright. Suddenly, it was perfectly normal for the government to tell you that you couldn’t leave your house. That’s just astonishing.

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You have a left that has become fundamentally authoritarian, constantly calling the other side “fascist,” when their own behavior often resembles fascism more closely.

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I think I would make a case for the fact that the climate change movement is also a mania. Whatever the actual science is, the fact that you are not allowed to differ or to amass evidence that contravenes this way of looking at the world and the future is a red flag for me. That, more than just a passing social interest, is what qualifies a mania: it has a religious component. SUGGESTED READING How to break free from political groupthink By Robert B. Talisse

You’ve stated that manias often involve intelligent, rational people, like some scientists during COVID. How can you recognize a mania as it’s happening, rather than only in hindsight?

By applying that test: during COVID, if you resisted the lockdowns—if you said, “This is not the way we have ever dealt with a contagious disease before, and it’s bound to do all kinds of economic damage, and closing the schools was a terrible idea”—you were not allowed to say that at the time. A whole generation is still paying the price for that. That means you’re caught up in something that is post-rational.