Anxiety in Politics

Now does it happen that the masses sell their souls to leaders and follow them blindly? On what does the power of attraction of leaders over masses rest? What are the historical situations in which this identification of leader and masses is successful, and what view of history do the men have who accept leaders?

The extraordinary difficulty in the comprehension of group-psychological phenomena lies first of all in our own prejudices; for the experiences of the last decades have instilled in us all more or less strong prejudices against the masses, and we associate with “masses” the epithet “mob”—a group of men who are capable of every atrocity. In fact the science of group psychology began with this aristocratic prejudice in the work of the Italian Scipio Sighele, and Le Bon’s famous book is completely in this tradition. His theses are familiar. Man in the mass descends; he is, as it were, hypnotized by the leader (operateur) and in t...