Mob Rule is Mass Hysteria

The idea of targeting buildings and people that stand for conspicuous consumption is an old one. The peasants' revolt of 1381 saw ferocious disturbances in London, and what was called "luxury" was one of its targets. Various palaces and grand houses such as the home of the Archbishop of Canterbury were sacked because they represented opulence. What could not be smashed, pulverized or burned was thrown into the river.

Our mother country, Great Britain, has a long tradition of riots and, through the centuries, mobs have often made their intended targets clear in advance. Protesters have realized that the anticipation of a riot can be as disruptive as any actual assault on property, and riots are more often remembered for their targets than for their causes. Nearly 500 years ago, on May 1, 1517, riots were directed against the property of affluent foreign merchants and craftsmen plying their trades in London. These became known as the "Evil May Day" riots.

Disturbances in Elizabethan and Jacobean England directed against the enclosure of common land frequently took place on traditional holidays. The rioters would throw down the fences erected to deny access to land on which they had once been allowed to graze their animals. The motives behind these riots were to demonstrate their contempt for the landowner (occasionally by surrounding his house or burning him in effigy).

The word "mob" was first used in 1688, the year of the Glorious Revolution, at a time of great political upheaval, and it was to become a key word in the 18th century. Writers such as Addison and Jonathan Swift complained about the inelegance of the term (short for "mobile vulgus", the excitable crowd), but it stood for a vulgar, sometimes irrepressible reality. Henry Fielding sardonically called the London mob the "fourth estate".

The age of Enlightenment saw its share of rioting and in the late 18th century, with the birth of the confident, organized and educated urban mob, riots began to show signs of the sophistication that they have today. In the 1760s and 1770s, protesters took to the streets in support of John Wilkes, who coined the dismissive term "mobocracy" to describe the revolutionary government of France. Wilkes, dubbed the first "mobocratical" politician by the press, campaigned for wider parliamentary representation, the liberty of bourgeois Englishmen, and the freedom of the press. His campaign was accompanied by displays of support on the London streets, bouts of window smashing in the City, and by random attacks on the houses of wealthy Londoners some of whom were supporters of Wilkes.

The most destructive riots of the early 19th century added another word to the English language. The Luddite disturbances in the north and the midlands, later fictionalized in Charlotte Brontë's novel, Shirley, occurred between 1811 and 1816, when rioters broke into mills and workshops to destroy the new machinery that threatened their jobs and rates of pay. In some cases, factories containing machines such as the new steam loom were destroyed.

More recently, we have become familiar with the idea that, when property is attacked, rage can give way to acquisitiveness even if the rioters have initially been infuriated by the acquisitiveness of others. Such were the images of the Watts riots of 1965. Local stores and businesses were attacked, ransacked and burned as TV viewers watched rioters looting anything in sight.

Probably one of the most famous historical images of violent protests is the storming of the Bastille in July 1789 that is taken as the beginning of the French Revolution. This was partly an achievement of later propaganda by the revolutionaries because the Bastille was far from being the vast, institutional embodiment of despotism. In fact the Bastille contained a mere seven petty criminals. The sans-culottes also marched on Versailles, the real seat of power, yet it is the symbol of the Bastille that is remembered.

In revolutions of the modern era, parliament buildings and TV stations have been the preferred targets; for successful revolutions, in this age of mass media, are also public performances. In Yugoslavia, Belgrade's parliament building served as a spectacular stage set for popular insurrection. The Berlin Wall was the perfect symbolic location for German celebrations after the downfall of the GDR. Thanks to a film-maker, Sergei Eisenstein, “the storming of the Winter Palace in St Petersburg with the masses trampling the thick carpets of the tsar became as central to the notion of the Russian Revolution as the storming of the Bastille to the French.”
Riots usually target symbols of power.

Mob rule tends to reflect an anti-authoritarian character and has not always been progressive in nature. If anything, mob rule tends to be reactionary and destructive of property if not lives.

Sometimes an entire profession has attracted the ire of the mob. “During the peasants' revolt in London, rioters vented their fury on the Temple in London, the hive of lawyers, who were hated as the agents of manorial lords, helping them control and bind their serfs. The Kentish men sacked the lawyers' inns and dwellings. A supportive eyewitness expressed support by sayin ‘It was marvelous to see how even the most aged and infirm of them scrambled off, with the agility of rats or evil spirits.’ Shakespeare was perhaps reflecting this historical reality in Henry VI part II when he had Dick the Butcher, right-hand man of the rebel Jack Cade, cry, "The first thing we do, let's kill all the lawyers."

Fear of the mob was keenly felt in Shakespeare's England. Dearth was a constant threat, food shortages were frequent and the populace was readily thought of as what one of his contemporaries called "the Beast with many Heads". In the opening scene of Coriolanus, Shakespeare dramatizes the fear of the mob as the patrician, Menenius, confronts a rabble of "poor citizens" who are demanding bread and threatening violence.

Among the most notorious instances of mob culture in America was the incident of the Salem witch trials. In these trials, there was a legal due process that was used to determine innocence or guilt. However, the unified beliefs of the townspeople overpowered the logic of the law. The Salem community abandoned logic. Instead of looking at the logic of the law, Salme simply followed the mob’s belief and many people were innocently targeted and put to death as a result.

The witch trial incidents serve as a very early example of how mob rule can take over and govern a society. In our contemporary society, mob rule is still a very prevalent phenomena. Remember the Duke Lacrosse team accusations? Duke administrators and professors shot from the hip in knee jerk fashion and did not follow the American legal precedent of innocent till proven guilty. Look at the harm and deprivation of personal reputation that resulted from this jumping to conclusions.

Other visible examples of mob rule on college campuses are the riots that break out on college campuses across the country. Riots are not a new phenomenon on college campuses as anyone who lived during the social revolution of the 1960s, but recent history suggests that they are a growing trend. For example, 2004 riots on the Hill at the University of Colorado demonstrate how a mob rule mentality can turn violent.

What starts as a celebration can quickly turn into a violent rebellion when police authorities show up. In the case of the riots at Colorado, a large party was shut down by the police. This scene then morphed into an angry mob intent upon defying the police. We also see this mob rule mentality when college students go on celebratory rampages. In many instances, riots seem to emerge from an extravagant celebration surrounding a school sports team winning a big game when one person or a small group becomes destructive. This initiates a domino effect that leads to mob driven violence.

What about the destruction of private and public property that results from these riots and demonstrations of mob rule? Why is there no remorse for such destruction? American history is replete with numerous instances of mob rule that have led to violence for many different reasons. Regardless of the setting or situation, mass hysteria determined the outcome, rather than logic. Accepted norms encourage people to abandon reasonable and responsible decision making. Instead, the illogic group mind often leads to chaos and unnecessary destruction.