Gustave Le Bon, Crowds and Masses, and the Internet

 In 1895 (John Carey records in his book The Intellectuals and the Masses) Gustave Le Bon published The Crowd. I haven't read it, nor am I likely to, but it does appear in Carey's book for a couple of pages, and makes a point worth mentioning, about crowds and masses. 

Carey sums things up for us, by pointing out that Le Bon has confused a "crowd" ‒ a physical group of persons which may serve to de-individualise ‒ with the "mass", which is more of a 'psychological crowd, such as a democratic electorate'. A mass may be thousands of isolated individuals; a crowd must always be physically close. 

Le Bon lists the traits of crowds: suggestible, impulsive, irrational, emotional, inconstant, irritable, capable of thinking only in images, intolerant, dictatorial.

A crowd may display these traits, and in fact, I think I am inclined to agree. But in mixing up the concepts of "crowd" and "mass", Le Bon gifted these traits, incorrectly, to the mass. Carey brands The Crowd a work of 'science fiction'.

Perhaps Le Bon's claim that these masses (by which really he means crowds) aim to destroy civilisation and return to a state of primitive communism cements The Crowd's position as science fiction. But fast-forward 125 years, and perhaps the ideas aren't as ludicrous as we might instinctively think they are.

The creation of the internet, and, in particular, social media, has undeniably bridged physical distances in a way that Le Bon could never have foreseen. Indeed, we have reached a stage where platforms such as Facebook, and Twitter in particular, are now regarded as the public sphere, the public forum. 

Should we not therefore admit that the line ‒ branded science fiction by Carey ‒ between "crowd" and "mass" has been severely blurred. And indeed, that the modern crowd is far far larger, and therefore far far more dangerous, than any crowd that Le Bon could have imagined. 

Of course, we may say that we disagree with Le Bon's characterisation of crowds in the first place. But after the riots and demonstrations of the past couple of years, such as the USA's storming of the Capitol, and BLM demonstrations, and in fact any crowd action in history, perhaps his characterisation is correct.

And if that be so, then maybe we should not be blind to the dictatorial and irrational actions of the new, modern, online crowd.