Crowd Psychology, followers, leaders and enemies

In Psychology of Crowds (1895), Gustav Le Bon examines behaviour and emotions of these large, ephemeral aggregates. This is the age of crowds gathering for many reasons such as a parade, procession, show, sporting match, concert, market, up to the well-known vast gatherings typical of totalitarian regimes. Widely disseminated and studied, often with a view to managing it, the phenomenon presents different aspects here divided into three phases. 1) Being with Others. Into crowd, Ego tends to lose its personal faculties in order to identify and think like Others, attracted by flashy words and slogans, and subjected to propaganda, until it creates the crowd mental unity. Personal judgment and will are lost, and through suggestion and contagion from ideas and emotionality of others, a collective ethology known as herd instinct is born. 2) Standing under a Chief, leader, or prophet, because the masses need him as movement symbol and source of analysis, revelations, slogans, and directives, thus governing everyone's thinking and behaviours. Crowd mental unity and pack behaviours are subjected to the leader. 3) Having an Antagonist, adversary, or enemy, whose presence unites the crowd under the leader and prepares it to confront him. The crowd, of any nature, is a simple aggregate but can give rise to complex, enduring societies such as parties, unions, institutions, and various associations. But beware: in its spontaneity, it follows a psycho-ethological archetype that originated in our past and is clearly observable among current primates.