When Jesus spoke to the possessed man at Gesthene, he asked for the demon’s name and it replied, “It is Legion, for we are many.” Scary stuff, to be sure. But when you remove the spirit aspect of this story, the “Legion” is really just one guy. He might have been a tough guy who was really crazy, lived in caves, and cut himself with stones, but it was still only one man. He had the spirit of many, but the body of one.

Spirit need not frighten us. We can see a similar force at work in both television and the Internet, most recently demonstrated when the Legion focused its all-seeing eye on Memories Pizza in Indiana. Caught in a culture war much bigger than the walls of its establishment, the owner of Memories Pizza indicated that she would decline to cater a gay wedding. Quite a piece of one-shot, one-kill “journalism,” as the restaurant and its owners were beset with threats and vitriol until deciding to close.

The Internet Enables and Amplifies Flash Mobs

It is often quite easy to feel that you are greatly outnumbered and that the entire world is against you, particularly if you have the gall to air your beliefs in the public realm (or be caught in it, in this situation). Social media can seemingly explode with anger at your mention of a political or cultural position that goes against whatever the Video Music Awards are advocating this year. You are beset by Legion.

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