The Crowd: Mass Formation Psychosis
Although written in 1895, Gustav Le Bon’s treatise on crowds is an insight into human behaviour that is as relevant today as it might have been at any moment in history. It is noted as one of the first studies of crowd behaviour, or what has recently been referred to as ‘mass formation psychosis’ by Mattias Desmet in his insightful book ‘The Psychology of Totalitarianism’. The basic premise, supported by examples throughout, is that the individual loses all sense of moral and ethical behaviour when the phenomenon of crowd contagion manifests itself: “crowds become common property. In the collective mind the intellectual aptitudes of the individuals, and in consequence their individuality, are weakened. The heterogenous is swamped by the homogenous and the unconscious qualities obtain the upper hand” (12).
If we take the ideas of Le Bon and compare and contrast them with the current environment of online contagion – influenced by nudge, behavioural psychology, gaslighting by fact checkers and other nefarious strategies – it is very easy to concur with Le Bon’s observation that “Civilisations as yet have only been created and directed by a small intellectual aristocracy, never by crowds. Crowds are only powerful for destruction”. In the current environment however, we can replace ‘intellectual aristocracy’ with ‘porkulent corporate crapocracy’.
The increasing censorship and control of the online space(s) brought about by powerful unelected entities such as the IMF, WHO and WEF, and supported by corporate psychocrats via centralised organisations such as DAVOS, means that the minds and (e)motions of the crowd can now be instantly (im)mobilised in order to achieve specific outcomes. The most obvious recent example would be the mass hysteria brought about by Covid (C-19). Le Bon states that:
‘The most striking peculiarity presented by a psychological crowd is the following: whoever be the individuals that compose it, however like or unlike be their mode of life, their occupations, their character, or their intelligence, the fact that they have been transformed into a crowd puts them in possession of a sort of collective mind which makes them feel, think, and act in a manner quite different from that in which each individual of them would feel, think, and act were he in a state of isolation’
An update of this observation would have to acknowledge that the isolation of the individual via the predominant shift to online communication during the imposed lockdowns during C-19, created anOther type of crowd. Through a stream of media governed narratives that drew upon behavioural psychology (as discussed previously), the individual was exposed to a psychological ‘contagion’ that le Bon calls ‘phenomena of a hypnotic order’ (13). This phenomenon was capitalised upon by a governmental/corporate led dispositif to incite a crowd formation that aggressively marginalised those who were considered as the Other, namely pro-choice individuals, the unmasked and the unvaccinated. In his 2018 discussion of Baudrillard’s use of an immunological analogy to describe the violence of the ‘global’, philosopher Byung-Chul Han notes that ‘the violence of the global is a “viral violence, that of networks and the virtual’. Virtuality is viral” (14). In a premonition like way, Han predicted the viral violence that an epidemiological virus would cause on a global scale. Misinformation, disinformation, fear and anxiety were at the core of a new virtuality that was promoted and distributed via multiple agencies and interests during the pandemic, to the point that it became a new terrifying reality for many: as Han poignantly reminds us ‘the society of fear and the society of hatred are mutually dependent’. Division, aggression and marginalisation ensued at a rapid pace for those classed as Other.
Influenced by a torrent of disaster/atrocity propaganda and stunt covid imagery, supplied on a 24/7 basis via social media platforms and legacy media, it is easy to see how the global acceptance of totalitarian lockdown regimes - imposed undemocratically by technocrats upon the masses – was achieved.
Desmet draws on Hannah Arendt’s description of the ideal subject of the totalitarian state as one who no longer knows the difference between pseudo-scientific fiction and reality. Le Bon wrote that ‘crowds are only cognisant of simple and extreme sentiments; the opinions, ideas, and beliefs suggested to them are accepted or rejected as a whole, and considered as absolute truths or as not less absolute errors’ (26). He goes on to note that ‘being in doubt as to what constitutes truth or error, and having, on the other hand, a clear notion of its strength, a crowd is as disposed to give authoritative effect to its inspirations as it is intolerant. An individual may accept contradiction and discussion; a crowd will never do so.’ Le Bon’s words may have been written in 1895 but they rang resoundingly true in 2020 and continue to do so.
During the measures that were imposed on a seemingly ad-hoc basis during C-19, I was subject to, and witnessed, many incidents of aggression and intolerance from the ‘crowd’, including those in official roles such as border forces, Eurostar staff and airport workers. Reading Le Bon’s prescient analysis of crowds, it is clear to me that this form of mass manipulation and psychological control is nothing new. Desmet calls it ‘mass formation psychosis’, but Le Bon described the same process more than a century ago. The difference being that the speed and efficiency of the crowd formation is now, due to rapidly evolving technology and online connection, instant. This is where the modern context of global connection challenges Le Bon’s nineteenth century proposal - that it sometimes takes years to plant the idea in the minds of the crowd in order for them to act. In recent times crowds are capable of forming instantaneously as various ideas are set into play via TikTok, Facebook, Instagram and online media platforms. Misinformation, disinformation, malinformation, and other questionable labels, are employed in attempts to discredit certain ideas – usually those that are oppositional to corporate/governmental agendas – and to promote other ideas to enable them to grow in the psyche of the masses. It can be argued that these techniques are a part of the apparatus of disaster capitalism: which itself employs the crude and deliberately shocking imagery of ‘atrocity propaganda’. States of ‘exception’, such as C-19, or the punitive genocide that Israel has perpetrated on Gaza, present the perfect opportunity for disaster capitalism to thrive: Neoliberal architect Milton Friedman wrote that only a crisis, actual or perceived, produces real change and it can be argued that we have witnessed both of these manifestations of crises in recent decades.
During the past two decades we have been in a perpetual state of ‘advertised crisis’ – War on Terror; Financial Collapse; Austerity; C-19; Ukraine War; Israel’s Genocide of Palestinians etc. The perpetual state of precarity has led to the formation of crowds that seek more and more guidance from the state, or at least that’s how it can often be perceived, as new ‘online safety’ bills are passed with little resistance. Protests are rendered impotent under new government regulations, again with little resistance from the masses. In a preface to Isobel Lorey’s book State of Insecurity, Judith Butler summarises the discourse of ‘precarity’ as “consolidate(ing) power among those who wield the power to alternately promise its alleviation and threaten its continuation.” Whilst Isobel Lorey tells us that “precariousness relates not to life itself, but rather to the conditions of its existence”. This image of the powerful providing relief from the appalling conditions that they have surreptitiously imposed upon the crowd represents nothing less than a totally dysfunctional relationship: complete with notions of mutual dependency, gaslighting, violence and covert/overt narcissism: an update on the good cop, bad cop narrative.
By keeping the crowd in a state of continual anxiety it is easier to achieve ‘mass formation’ by imposing, and maintaining, states of shock in order to create unsteady state conditions. We can consider this tactic as ‘shaping the environment’, also known as ‘choice architectures’. The individual is ‘nudged’ along governmental/corporate pathways whilst being encouraged to believe it is their own free will that is at play. A key factor of ‘nudge theory’ is the ability for an individual “to maintain freedom of choice and to feel in control of the decisions they make”. Yet, this definition, provided by Thaler and Sunstein who introduced the concept in 2008, sounds rather too benign when we consider that UK behavioural psychologists (headed by Imperial College professor Susan Michie) decided to deliberately invoke fear amongst the population in order to achieve acquiescence to a nationwide lockdown: the damage of which is still emerging today and which includes widespread socio-economic downturns, trauma, mental illness, severe poor health amongst the poor, and learning impairment amongst children, to name but a few.
Alongside ‘disaster capitalism’ we often witness the nefarious entity of ‘celebration capitalism’. The result of celebration capitalism’s large-scale enterprises, such as the Olympic Games, is what David Harvey calls ‘accumulation by dispossession’. At the time of writing, this outcome is easily identifiable in Paris, as the French government prepare to host the Olympic Games. The poor (mostly in Saint Denis) are evicted from their homes - usually with a promise of new affordable housing that will (a)rise after the games have left town, but which never materialises – to make way for new Olympic sites. The residents are nudged from their homes with a mixture of aggressive ‘new imperialism’ and benign promises of a better life/space. The 2020 IOC charter states that ‘the goal of Olympism is to place sport at the service of the harmonious development of humankind (…) with the preservation of human dignity’. However, this grand narrative appears contradictory when set against the violent displacement of poor communities through mass evictions that accompany the games.
In 2021, Dalrymple wrote that the games have been ‘foisted on the French people (…) without their consent [and] much of the building, will take place in Saint Denis, the poorest and most overcrowded part of the city.’ This Olympian displacement of the poor is enacted through ‘visible policies of forced evictions [and] veiled ones such as gentrification’. Through the hyper mediatisation of the IOC’s Olympian values, the Games are imbued with an almost unquestionable sacred purity whilst sponsorship deals are brokered with ‘some of the best-known multinational companies in the world’ The corporate driven Olympic mega-spectacle obscures the fundamental reconfiguring of rights of the city’s working class and minority residents as they are forcibly dispossessed to make way for the Games.
Le Bon acknowledges the tactics used by Roman emperors to appease the restless crowds, wherein the ruler would announce the games, both as a distraction and as a means of regaining the crowds support. Whether, it is the spectacle of the Olympics, World Cup football, music concerts or other events, the ‘spectacle’ is still employed today in order to distract and appease: the spectacle says Guy Debord, “encapsulates the absolute socio-economic governance of that particular society and consequently we are compelled to engage with its processes and ‘agenda’.” Le Bon discusses the excessive suggestibility of crowds noting that ,“however indifferent it may be supposed, a crowd, as a rule, is in a state of expectant attention, which renders suggestion easy”(18). The theatrical staging of Boris Johnson’s March 23rd, 2020, announcement of a nationwide lockdown certainly orchestrated a ‘state of expectant attention’, and furthermore it transformed the attentive online gaze into an ‘act’ of self-sacrifice. The crowd was drawn to the “nature of the exciting cause” (19).
Prior to the lockdown announcement, legacy media had been providing a continual barrage of shocking images from China, replete with men in hazmat suits welding people into their homes or spraying them with chemical germ suppressant. Laura Dodsworth revealed in her book ‘A State of Fear’, that these images have been retrospectively linked to what she calls ‘stunt covid’ and cannot now be found anywhere online now. They were, to put it plainly, staged in order to terrify the crowds into compliance with government and corporate (pharmaceutical) agendas. The way in which this government campaign of fear, waged upon its own populous, succeeded, is through the use of ‘spectacle’. A crowd, Le Bon tells us, “thinks in images, and the image itself immediately calls up a series of other images, having no logical connection with the first (...) it accepts as real the images invoked in its mind, though they most often have only a very distant relation with the observed fact” (19). Isolated within their own homes, individuals were fed a 24/7 campaign of fear through their TV screens and computers, and whilst consuming what can only be described as B-list pseudo-scientific horror movie, they became a mass. It was a startling achievement of mass formation psychosis, and one that was achieved almost instantly due to the reach and power of the online spectacle. A form of mass OCD (obsessive compulsive disorder*) could be seen everywhere one turned, and this itself created a sort of manic impulse to police and bully Others into conforming to the same non-sensical rituals and behaviours. Mask wearing, standing six feet apart, continually putting hand cleansing gel on, not hugging or visiting people, not gathering in groups, all of these random measures were adopted by the masses, with zealot like commitment.
Now, as I write this, the Astra Zeneca vaccine has been withdrawn due to adverse reactions: a few rare ones they say. But us ‘conspiracy theorist, tin foil hat wearing’ independent researching geeks, know that also is a lie. Many have died and many are injured and over the years that will become clearer to the masses, even in their state of mass formation psychosis. The combined corruption of legacy media, corporate lobbying and other nefarious entities is becoming obvious even to diehard BBC acolytes.
References:
Dalrymple, T. (2021) Paris Sold a Bill of Goods With 2024 Olympics, The Epoch Times. Available at: https://www.theepochtimes.com/paris-sold-a-bill-of-goods-with-2024-olympics_3664470.html?welcomeuser=1 (Accessed: 5 March 2021).
Debord, G. (1983) Society of the Spectacle. Detroit: Black and Red.
IOC (2020) Olympic Charter, Olympic.org. Available at: https://www.olympic.org/documents/olympic-charter (Accessed: 5 March 2024).
Kumar, A. (2012) Special Report: Want to cleanse your city of its poor? Host the Olympics, Ceasefire Magazine. Available at: https://ceasefiremagazine.co.uk/olympics-opportunity-cleanse-city/ (Accessed: 10 September 2023).
Le Bon, G. (1895) The Crowd: A Study Of The Popular Mind. Wroclaw: Maestro Reprints.
*Obsessive–compulsive disorder (OCD) is a mental and behavioural disorder in which an individual has intrusive thoughts (an obsession) and feels the need to perform certain routines (compulsions) repeatedly to relieve the distress caused by the obsession, to the extent where it impairs general function.