dzordan
13. Gustave le Bon: doublethink
The difficulty in the task of preventing mass publics from annihilating themselves in global conflict is in overcoming what Gustav Le Bon in 1896 called “the extreme mental inferiority of crowds.” His book _The Crowd_ describes how the public is “always unconscious” of its total effect, which makes it vulnerable to manipulation; “the most contradictory ideas may be seen to be simultaneously current in crowds,” he says, and “their complete lack of the critical spirit does not allow of [their] perceiving these contradictions.”
13. Gustave le Bon: doublethink
The difficulty in the task of preventing mass publics from annihilating themselves in global conflict is in overcoming what Gustav Le Bon in 1896 called “the extreme mental inferiority of crowds.” His book _The Crowd_ describes how the public is “always unconscious” of its total effect, which makes it vulnerable to manipulation; “the most contradictory ideas may be seen to be simultaneously current in crowds,” he says, and “their complete lack of the critical spirit does not allow of [their] perceiving these contradictions.”