Why villains win: Talking to Strangers by Malcolm Gladwell

Talking to Strangers – Malcolm Gladwell Allen Lane; Rs.799; Pages 386 How are the world’s greatest liars, frauds and megalomaniacs able to inflict lasting damage upon their societies and the world without highly trained and intelligent experts and watchdogs being able to see through them and stop them in time? That’s the subject of the latest investigation — deftly weaving history, psychology and sociology — conducted by Malcolm Gladwell, features writer of the New Yorker. Since he wrote his first bestseller Tipping Point in 2000, Gladwell has acquired a global reputation with his best-selling non-fiction: Blink (2005), Outliers (2008), What the Dog Saw (2009), David and Goliath (2013) among others. All of them have  topped the New York Times bestsellers list and have won him million dollar advances from publishers in the US. The objective of Gladwell’s latest oeuvre is to demonstrate that when strangers talk to each other, a false word here or there can lead to disastrous consequences, and conversely even when people communicate with familiar individuals they often fail to read their character or malign intent. Drawing from contemporary newspaper headlines, history, the murky world of espionage and famous legal cases, the author makes the case that even the most well-educated and trained professionals whose job is to detect crime and criminals, fail miserably and default to truth, i.e, give malfeasants the benefit of doubt. And if at all bigtime crooks and swindlers are outed and brought to book, it’s because a contrarian, ‘holy fool’ in Russian folklore — often “a social misfit, eccentric, off-putting and sometimes even crazy” non-establishment outcast — blurts out an inconvenient truth or question. Much like the little boy who said the emperor had no clothes. To illustrate his contention that the vast majority of people can’t adequately read strangers or even acquaintances, the author draws upon a series of fascinating examples from ancient and 20th century history. In 1519, the Spanish conquistador Hernando Cortes became the first European to hit land in Mexico and met with King Montezuma II, ruler of the Aztec empire, a civilisation far in advance of 16th century Europe. Neither spoke each other’s language and relied on inexpert translators. The upshot was that when the king uttered an honorific for Cortez, it was translated into the former accepting Cortez as a god. And later when Montezuma didn’t accord him the respect due to God, Cortes had him murdered, and war broke out resulting in the devastation of the Aztec civilisation through armed conflict and diseases that unwashed Europeans brought with them. This encounter also flagged off the European conquest of India and Africa and changed the course of world history. Four centuries later, at a time when the global power of the British empire was threatened by Adolf Hitler and Nazi Germany, prime minister Neville Chamberlain took his first flight abroad to meet with the German dictator. Although there was a mountain of evidence, including his book Mein Kampf in which Hitler had written of his intent to conquer Europe, exterminate Jews, and…