Age of the mob

Author: Moscovici
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2006-05-01
Features: Regardless of their individual origins and other differences, crowds share certain common characteristics. These include extreme paranoia, terrible sensitivity, absurd arrogance, and extreme irresponsibility, all stemming from their excessive self-importance and fervor. For crowds, there is no middle ground between fear and excitement, or between cries of "Hooray" and "Down with." — Tarde (1910) All our outdated notions are in turmoil. The ancient pillars of society are also collapsing one by one. The power of the crowd is the only force that remains unchallenged, and its authority is constantly rising. The era we are about to enter will be an age of the crowd. — Le Bon (1952) The crowd is the people freed from chains, devoid of conscience, without leaders, and without discipline; they are slaves to instinct. — Moscovici (1981) This book's first part explores the reasons behind the emergence of a discipline dedicated to the study of crowds and the themes it examines. The second and third parts discuss how Le Bon established this discipline. First, he described the crowd and its leaders, then he proposed methods for governing the crowd. Modern propaganda institutions and campaigns have widely applied these methods. In the fourth and fifth parts, I explain how Tarde summarized and generalized these descriptions to cover the entire field of social life forms. I also analyze the power leaders hold over the crowd. His key contribution is his theory of mass communication, which remains astonishing even today. As this part progresses, a rather elusive face of French humanities emerges. Finally, based on multiple revisions, I restate Freud's explanation of the crowd phenomenon in the remaining four parts. This serves as both a synthesis and a further development of the work of his predecessors. However, by adopting a new perspective, Freud transformed their hypotheses into a theoretical derivation. In fact, this is the only comprehensive account we have of crowd psychology, and thus can be considered a classic exposition.