Transcription
Hey everyone, what does this remind you of? I'm Rich Larry of the National Review and that was Gregory Bo, the chief of border patrol getting swarmed by anti-ag agitators in Minneapolis. And you know what that makes me think of a little bit? The French Revolution.
Now, I'm not saying he's going to get torn limb by limb from a mob and get his head stuck on a pike and have his head paraded around the Twin Cities. At least let's hope not. But I think it's the French Revolution that represents the purest distillation of what mobs are really like in their most extreme form. And this is the event where unfortunately mobs had their greatest effect on the course of Western history.
So, what I want to do here, look a little at the French Revolution, develop some themes and points about mobs and what they're like, bring those forward, illustrate them with reference to Minneapolis, and then go on to some of the best thinking we've ever had about what mobs are and how they think or very often don't think.
So, let's start with this horrible cataclysm that rocked France in the late 18th century, the French Revolution. Okay, we don't need to go into great detail about the French Revolution. The crucial point is that it was driven by mobs and by mob violence. Simon Shaman in his great classic book about the French Revolution called Citizens makes the point the French Revolution didn't devolve into violence. It was defined by violence and by the work of mobs pretty much from the very beginning, right?
Storming of the Bastile, we still have Bastile Day celebrated in France. It's the work of a mob. And the governor of the Bastile is promised safe passage. A mob surges, captures him, beats him, kills him, beheads him, and takes his head, puts it on a pike, and parades it around the streets.
Then you have the so-called Great Fear in 1789. Out in the countryside, the peasants think that there is an aristocratic plot to starve them deliberately. There is nothing to this. It is totally made up. It's based on rumor and paranoia, but it totally runs out of control, right? Everyone thinks, well, if the other people think there's this aristocratic plot, there must be an aristocratic plot. And those other people think, well, those guys think it, so we got to think it. It must be true. They think they're Briggins roaming the countryside that have to be fought and resisted. So, you have armed peasants in one village, then mistaking the peasants in the other village who've also taken up arms to fight these supposed briggins. They think they're the Briggins. So this this phenomenon totally disconnected from reality but creates this massive spasm of disorganized mob violence.
In 1792 you have the September massacres here. Prussia and Austria France is at war at the time. Prussia and Austria are advancing. Creates heightened tensions within France understandably. But then this rumor starts that there's this fifth column. these internal enemies that are going to rise up and end the revolution and slaughter all the revolutionaries and these it's prisoners that are going to do this. So what do we have to do? They're going to kill us. We got to go in the prisons first and kill them. And the mobs descend on the prisons in the course of about five days. They kill more than a thousand people. They set up these kangaroo tribunals that reach these instant verdicts about people based on nothing. on their name, on their accent, on their appearance. And it's another horrific event of the French Revolution.
I mentioned appearance. The revolutionaries of course were known as San Colot. Colot were knee breaches. They didn't wear knee breaches. They wore long trousers. And if you didn't wear the same thing, if you didn't look like them, if you didn't look the right way by their definitions, they were suspicious of you. They might come after you. Symbolism mattered a lot. You had to wear the tricolor cockade. And if you didn't, they were suspicious of you and they might come after you.
So before we move on here, just want to focus in a little bit on what this violence, mob violence, looked like in a little more granular detail. Dickens had a great description and his classic novel about the French Revolution, A Tale of Two Cities. This is a passage about the killing of an unpopular official named Joseph Felain who was caught up in the paranoia about aristocrats supposedly plotting to starve the populace. This is what Dickens writes.
This is when the mob realizes that it can get at the men were terrible and the bloody-minded Agarth looked from the windows caught up what arms they had and came pouring down into the streets. But the women were a sight to chill the boldest. They ran out with streaming hair, urging one another and themselves to madness with the wildest cries and actions. Villain Fainon taken my sister, old Felain taken my mother, miscreant fallen taken my daughter. Then scores of others run ran into the midst of these husbands and brothers and young men. Give us the blood of Fain. Give us the head of Fain. Give us the heart of Fain. Give us the body and soul of Fain. Ran Fallon to pieces and dig him into the ground that grass may grow from him.
Needless to say, it did not end well for Fain. He had supposedly said, by the way, that the people can eat grass and they stuffed grass into his mouth as they were killing him. And afterwards, I just want to focus on one last example because I just think the details are important to get at what we're really talking about here. Same time period. This is historian describing an innocent baker caught up by the mob. His name was Francois. Francois was just commencing his seventh batch on that day when a woman who had been unable to procure bread at 9ine in the morning and was told to wait until the seventh batch was completed entered his house to assure herself that all the bread had really been sold. She found three stale loaves which had been reserved for the men. She rushed to the street holding one in her hand loudly accusing the baker of only distributing a part of a stock. Riot began. He was accused of wishing to keep bread from the people. They burst into a shop, seized the unhappy man, and disregarding his cries, hanged him. They paraded his head on a pike through the streets, compelling every baker they met to kiss the remains. The unhappy wife of Francois, far advance in pregnancy, running about in a state of distraction, met the crowd at the sight of the bloody head. She fainted. The mob had the barbarity to lower it into her arms and press the lifeless lips against her face. Unspeakable cruelty.
Again, of course, we're not seeing anything on that level in Minneapolis. But what have we learned through this brief description of mobs and how they operated in the French Revolution? Well, mobs are obsessed with seeking out and hunting down their enemies. They operate on the basis of suspicion, rumor, and paranoia. They are cruel. They want to intimidate people and make examples of them. They are violent and they are obsessed with symbolism. And we see every single one of these things in Minneapolis at the moment.
Seeking out, hunting down their enemies. Yes. Here's a clip of a a mob going after a conservative in a car.
>> That's him.
>> Is that him? Is that him?
>> Yeah.
>> Open the door.
>> Oh my god. DRIVE. DRIVE. DRIVE. DRIVE. OH MY GOD.
>> HEY. HEY. Pull over. Pull over.
>> Pull over.
>> Leave it.
>> Get out of here.
>> Pull it up.
>> NO.
>> JUST LET HIM LEAVE.
Operating on the basis of rumor and paranoia. Yeah. Here they are going after a couple tech workers that they think are ICE agents at a cafe.
>> So clear. So clear. Oh my god.
>> What? We We do custom apps for a whole bunch of companies around Minnesota and the country.
>> Filming us.
>> Why are you
>> Because you're filming us.
And here they are going after someone they suspect of being an ICE agent based on the car he's driving and tell him by the way in the future to rent a different car because that vehicle is too counterrevolutionary and Ilike.
>> There. Like I said, I don't have to do this. I'm happy to do this.
>> Yeah. Yeah.
>> That's all. We just got to stop this.
>> So, he's got a lot of camera equipment. I think we can say this is it.
>> Yeah, I'm not I tried to tell the first lady. Nobody believes me.
>> That's all I can do is tell you
>> I already show Listen, first of all, I don't I don't have to do any of that, but I'm kind, you know, I respect the yard.
>> Yeah. No, no, no. There's I really appreciate what you guys are doing. I just don't understand my job and I don't know how to
>> Were you here yesterday? Yeah.
>> Yes. He was here yesterday. I can testify that. I didn't recognize him.
>> No, I appreciate your help. Thank you.
>> I'm not here to help you. I think the fact that you're in a vehicle like this,
>> but with all due respect, everybody, I can't help what I drive.
>> Well, you can't. You go rent something out.
Seeking to intimidate and demand assent to their agenda. Yeah. Here's a burly guy just walking down the street.
>> WHERE YOU GOING? HUH? Are you ice?
>> No. Do you like ice? Say ice. Say it. Say it. YOU'RE A MOM'S A [screaming]
VIOLENT. YEAH. Here they are knocking down a guy just suspected of being with ICE.
>> POLICE. Let him go. OKAY. Let him go. GET YOUR ASS OUT.
>> YOU know what they ask?
>> That's all they ask. Watch out. Watch out.
>> HE'S ONE OF US.
>> He's one of us.
>> Okay. Good.
>> You all right, dude?
>> You all right?
>> He's one of us.
>> How do we know?
>> HOW DO WE KNOW?
>> Cuz I was with him earlier.
>> Why you getting ran out earlier?
>> I don't know. He's one of us. I'm with them.
Here they are manhandling and injuring right-wing activist Jake Lang.
[music]
And here they are warring with ICE.
[screaming and groaning]
Obsessed with symbols and trying to coerce people into conformity. Yep.
>> You're not going to take it off.
>> Take it off.
>> Take it off. He gave you a chance.
>> There you go. I got you. You're good.
>> Get your ass up out of here,
mobs. It's all right there. And as promised, let's consider very briefly the work of perhaps the greatest analyst of mobs. A French polymath named Gustav Labon. His life and career spanned late 19th early 20th century. Wrote a lot of books. One of them was called the psychology of revolution. And let's take a look at a passage from that.
Whatever their origin, revolutions do not produce their full effects until they have penetrated the soul of the multitude. They therefore represent a consequence of the psychology of crowds. Man as part of a multitude is a very different being from the same man as an isolated individual. His conscious individuality vanishes in the unconscious personality of the crowd. The collective mind momentarily formed represents a very special kind of aggregate. Its chief peculiarity is that is entirely dominated by unconscious elements and is subject to a peculiar collective logic. Among the other characteristics of crowds, we must note their infinite credulity and exaggerated sensibility, their short-sightedness, and their incapacity to respond to the influences of reason. By reason of the extreme sensibility of crowds, their sentiments, good or bad, are always exaggerated. This exaggeration increases still further in times of revolution. The least excitement will then lead them to act with the utmost fury. Their credulity, so great, even in the normal state, is still further increased. The most improbable statements are accepted. These various characteristics show that man in the crowd descends to a very low degree in the scale of civilization. He becomes a savage with all a savage faults in qualities.
Just so. And that's why the likes of Tim Waltz and Jacob Fry need to call off what Labon called the savages. They need to tell the mobs to cease and desist and go home. I'm Rich Lowry. Over and