THE EVIL OF POPULISM:

One of the best-known works in the field of mass psychology, The Crowd by Gustave Le Bon was first published in French as La Psychologie des foules in 1895 and is still widely studied. As a scientific treatise, it was a product of its time and not immune to imperfections, but it got many core claims right and has prompted further research into the topic to this day. As a philosophical treatise, it contains many significant insights into human nature and the unspoken laws that shape our civilisation. It is well-structured, easy to read, and a great starting point for discussing the masses.

The first four chapters focus on the crowd's collective mind, unity, habits, and the ways it processes information. Le Bon observes that, when a crowd is formed, individual personalities are erased and replaced by common ideas and feelings; a man, therefore, acts in ways he would not on his own. Unlike the thoughts he may develop when isolated, the ideas of the collective have to be understood by all simultaneously and thus must be as simple as possible. They are vivid images guided at best by superficial logic and at worst by flawed intuition--powerful, contagious, and constantly fluctuating. 

The passions of a crowd roar with a primordial strength, and its fears are diminished by the sense of invulnerability, making it capable of both heroic deeds and despicable crimes. However, it has its natural limitations. "Civilisations as yet have only been created and directed by a small intellectual aristocracy, never by crowds," claims Le Bon. "Crowds are only powerful for destruction. Their rule is always tantamount to a barbarian phase. A civilisation involves fixed rules, discipline, a passing from the instinctive to the rational state, forethought for the future, an elevated degree of culture--all of them conditions that crowds, left to themselves, have invariably shown themselves incapable of realising." He further states that their beliefs always assume a "religious" form, characterised by "blind submission, fierce intolerance, and the need of violent propaganda."

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