Reactionary attitudes: Strawson, Twitter, and the Black Lives Matter movement

This chapter examines the extent to which conflictual intergroup moral dynamics can be understood through Strawson’s reactive-attitude framework. It utilises empirical and theoretical methodologies to analyse the online Twitter discourse around the Black Lives Matter protests reignited in the wake of George Floyd’s murder on 25 May 2020. Four distinct communities engaged in the Black Lives Matter Movement are identified using social network analysis and the Leiden community detection algorithm: Activists, Progressives, Reactionaries, and Boosters. These communities are analysed using Strawson’s theory of moral responsibility, as captured in his seminal paper “Freedom and Resentment” (1962). Although attitudes akin to resentment and indignation can be located, dynamics such as contempt and counter-indignation do not find a place in Strawson’s framework. The framework lacks a category for those who vicariously support the accused party, as exemplified by the Reactionary community and their All Lives Matter counter-discourse. Online social networks and colour-blind ideology are further examined as two factors that facilitate counter-indignation and constitute challenges to Strawson’s theory. This chapter thus argues that the reactive-attitude framework should be expanded to better account for contemporary, asymmetrical relations, as exemplified by the Black Lives Matter protests and the new forms of reactive attitudes they engender.