Human Manipulation - CROWDS

Any social science or self proclaimed student of social engineering and history will undoubtedly come across the work of the French social psychologist, Gustave Le Bon. As a graduate student I took some interesting courses in Information Operations which included historical military applications using PSYOPS, strategic communications and even the more innocuous, public diplomacy and public affairs. Many of the underlying principles which made these methods functional was related to the work in the social sciences from Anthropology to Psychology, especially the study of crowd dynamics.

In the collective mind the intellectual aptitudes of the individuals, and in consequence their individuality, are weakened. The heterogeneous is swamped by the homogeneous, and the unconscious qualities obtain the upper hand.

In a crowd every sentiment and act is contagious, and contagious to such a degree that an individual readily sacrifices his personal interest to the collective interest. As such, crowds manifest special characteristics which are quite contrary to those presented by the isolated individual.

As Le Bon states, The disappearance of the conscious personality, the predominance of the unconscious personality, the turning of feelings and ideas in an identical direction by means of suggestion and contagion, the tendency to immediately transform the suggested ideas into acts; these, we see, are the principal characteristics of the individual forming part of a crowd.

It is important to note that the crowd is always intellectually inferior to the isolated individual, but that, from the point of view of feelings and of the acts these feelings provoke, the crowd may, according to circumstances, be better or worse than the individual.

In addition, among the special characteristics of crowds there are several—such as impulsiveness, irritability, incapacity to reason, the absence of judgment and of the critical spirit, the exaggeration of the sentiments. A crowd is at the mercy of all external exciting causes, and reflects their incessant variations. It is the slave of the impulses which it receives. The varying impulses which crowds obey may be, according to their exciting causes, generous or cruel, heroic or cowardly, but they will always be so imperious that the interest of the individual, even the interest of self-preservation, will not dominate them. As a result, any display of premeditation by crowds is in consequence out of the question. They may be animated in succession by the most contrary sentiments, but they will always be under the influence of the exciting causes of the moment.

This mobility of crowds renders them very difficult to govern, especially when a measure of public authority has fallen into their hands. Still, though the wishes of crowds are frenzied they are not durable. Crowds are as incapable of willing as of thinking for any length of time. As a result, a crowd is not merely impulsive and mobile. Like a savage, it is not prepared to admit that anything can come between its desire and the realisation of its desire.

As Le Bon accurately stated, An isolated individual knows well enough that alone he cannot set fire to a palace or loot a shop, and should he be tempted to do so, he will easily resist the temptation. Making part of a crowd, he is conscious of the power given him by number, and it is sufficient to suggest to him ideas of murder or pillage for him to yield immediately to temptation. An unexpected obstacle will be destroyed with frenzied rage.

The fundamental characteristics of the race, which constitute the unvarying source from which all our sentiments spring, always exert an influence on the irritability of crowds, their impulsiveness and their mobility, as on all the popular sentiments. This is an important point that Le Bon was cognizant in relation to historical cases which illustrated racial factors as an inextricable element in relation to inciting violence and intensifying divide. This is something everyone should be aware of considering the increasing marginalization of race and conflict in the US today. This is something both the status quo establishment and the media are complicit.



Thus, be extremely wary of crowds and the collectivist mindset. In light of Le Bon's extensive historical research, crowd dynamics equate to mass manipulation irrespective of the ideology or cause. Emotional sentiment and illogical attributes will contribute to conflict escalation and any PSYOP will be effective considering the lack of moral, ethical and intellectual characteristics of crowds.

When defining crowds, we said that one of their general characteristics was an excessive suggestibility, and we have shown to what an extent suggestions are contagious in every human agglomeration; a fact which explains the rapid turning of the sentiments of a crowd in a definite direction.

Le Bon