A billion lies about a gazillion cries

In politics, it’s not what you do with your crowd: it’s all about the size.

The crowd is the animating energy of power, putting the spring in the goose-step of despots and the zing in the psychosexual compulsions of inadequate, ambitious politicians.

For a certain kind of small Big Man, there is nothing that compares to looking out over 10,000 nodding heads and seeing his lies land like soft, wet kisses.

Not surprisingly, the size of crowds retains an urgent grip on the egos of the world’s leaders.

It is difficult to keep track of all of US President Donald Trump’s lies — he produces them faster than fact-checkers can type — but one of his first and most notable was his ludicrous claim about the size of the crowd at his inauguration.

And it clearly still stings: in August he was still hunched over in the bathroom with a ruler, pouting that the media was talking about the size of Elizabeth Warren’s crowds while his, “which are far bigger, get no coverage at all”.

Fortunately for Trump ’ s blood pressure, and whichever White House staffer was the designated tantrum pacifier that week, the Republican faithful heeded the kvetching of their god-king: after a rally in Phoenix they offered him some visual Viagra, tweeting photos of throngs of people lining the streets.

Inevitably, these were quickly revealed to be images of a parade thrown for a local basketball team, but no doubt they had already done the trick.

Indeed, internet fact-checking organisations are increasingly being called upon to verify photographs not of aliens or lizard people but entirely human crowds as politicians and their supporters bombard the web with pictures of religious gatherings, political rallies in other countries or even sporting events, and proclaim them to be proof of their own enormous popularity.

One French company has even developed software that accurately estimates the largest possible number of people who can realistically pack into any geographical area, a useful tool as we drift further away from basic facts and numbers and populists start tweeting campaign pictures claiming to show them enjoying lunch in a local cafe with three-million supporters.

To be fair, the size of one’s membership isn’t just a matter of pride. A large crowd can convince voters that you are strong and beloved, but a small one can be seized upon by rivals or enemies who can circulate the narrative that you are struggling with a form of electile dysfunction.

Consider, for example, Carl Niehaus’s thinly disguised Schadenfreude last Saturday, as he posted a picture of the dismal crowd that had turned out in Kimberley to mark the ANC’s 108th birthday.

Insisting that he was a “loyal but very concerned member of the ANC”, he tweeted that this was “the smallest crowd I have ever seen at a January 8 rally, and their response was so muted”. Adding an emoji of a crying face, presumably because there are no emojis of crying crocodiles, he warned that the “writing is on the wall” and that “we better get our act together quickly before it is too late”.

It was a sledgehammer-subtle attack on the popularity and effectiveness of Cyril Ramaphosa and it raised the ire of a number of the president’s supporters, who asked Niehaus how, after staying silent during Jacob Zuma’s demolition of the party and the country’s institutions, he had suddenly found his voice.

I am not a fan of Niehaus but I must say I found this accusation unfair.

There has not been a month in the past two decades in which we couldn ’ t hear the shrill warble, punctuated now and then with wet sucking noises, of Carl singing for his supper in some parking lot or military costume rental agency.

Likewise, I can see no lie in what he tweeted.

The writing is most certainly on the wall, usually on a hastily printed sign saying things like “Emergency diesel supplies this way” and “Viva Numsa, viva!”

It is also true that Niehaus’s faction had better get its act together quickly: its continued rearguard effort to derail attempts to save our state-owned enterprises run the risk of leaving no economy whatsoever to loot.

So how many people will come to the ANC’s 109th birthday party?

Perhaps that will depend on the host. If it’s Ramaphosa, we can depend on the same shuffling, threadbare rent-a-crowd, its excitement dependent on whether the sausage rolls get delivered on time.

If, on the other hand, something awful happens and it’s Carl’s crew up on the platform, well, it could be anything between 300 million and 14 billion.

Because when facts try to come between populists and their embrace of the multitude, three is most definitely a crowd.

Eaton is an Arena group columnist.

The size of crowds retains an urgent grip on the egos of the world’s leaders