Anger

Summary

Anger, akin to the wrath of God or the wrath of Achilles, the godlike hero from the Iliad, has long been considered a powerful and empowering emotion that is not for everyone. This chapter shows how in modern societies it rages in common people, while fighting in war, starting revolutions, contesting and sometimes even overthrowing political systems. But it is not only a genuine emotion felt and put into action. Anger can also be provoked, staged or even faked in order to strengthen a regime in power and justify its political decisions to the world. This was the case when in 1938 an alleged Volkszorn (people’s anger) was propagandistically declared the trigger of the infamous ‘Night of the Broken Glass’. For democracies, anger has to be considered a highly ambivalent feeling. On the one hand, it signals and legitimately expresses that people are dissatisfied and feel disappointed. On the other hand, anger can be extremely destructive when it renders a person impervious to the opinions and feelings of others and ends up in the refusal to engage in dialogue and the rejection of basic democratic rules, negotiation and settlement.