The angry mob confront the Monster (played by Boris Karloff)
in Frankenstein (dir. James Whale, 1931)
'Madness is something rare in individuals - but in groups, parties, peoples,
and ages, it is the rule.' [1]
I.
The term mob was a late-17th century slang abbreviation of the Latin phrase mobile vulgus, referring to an excitable and disorderly crowd of people who would often seek out a target or scapegoat on whom they could vent their fury and frustration over some matter or other.
Even as a young child, long before I knew anything about mass psychology, I had an instinctive aversion to the mob.
I remember, for example, watching Frankenstein for the first time and - without feeling particularly sorry for the Monster - intensely disliking the torch-bearing villagers who formed an angry mob in order to hunt him down [2].
I may not have had the language at ten-years-old to articulate how I felt, but I could see there was something far more frightening - far more
monstrous - about mob justice (i.e., vengeance) than about the Creature in all his
otherness.
II.
And today, when I do possess the language (and know a fair bit about mass psychology), I still don't like to see any individual - whatever crimes they are accused of - being intimidated and, on occasion, torn limb from limb or burnt alive by the mob (again, this doesn't necessarily mean my sympathies lie with them).
And that's why I cannot support any populist political movement or join in with any act of indecent bullying. As D. H. Lawrence writes, any man or woman who would affirm their own starry singularity must refuse to identify with the baying mob. It is not sentimentalism: it is just abiding by one's own feelings no matter what [3].
It's unfortunate, therefore, that today politicians on all sides seem intent on making an appeal to the masses (manipulating their concerns, their fears, their insecurities, etc.) and, on account of this intention, are compelled to "transform their principles into great al fresco stupidities" [4] and start waving flags (which, to my mind, belong in the same category as burning torches and pitchforks).
To paraphrase Voltaire: As soon as the mob gets involved, then all is lost ... [5]
Notes
[1] Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil, trans. R. J. Hollingdale (Penguin Books, 1990), Pt. IV, §156, p. 103.
[2] The famous scene of Frankenstein's monster being chased by an angry mob of peasants (eventually being trapped and burned alive inside an old windmill) belongs to the 1931 cinematic adaptation of Mary Shelley's 1818 novel; such a scene does not occur in the book.
To be fair to the villagers, the Creature was responsible for the drowning of a young girl, Maria, whom he throws into a lake (albeit in playful innocence rather than with murderous intent). Click here to watch the formation of the mob. And here for the terrible conclusion to mob justice (what Jean-François Lyotard terms paganism).
[3] See the famous 'Nightmare' chapter of Lawrence's 1923 novel Kangaroo in which the protagonist Richard Somers refuses under any circumstances to acquiesce in the vast mob-spirit that prevailed during the years 1916-19 when, in his view - thanks to the War - so many lost their individual integrity.
The Cambridge edition of this work, ed. Bruce Steele, was published in 1994. The long 'Nightmare' chapter is on pp. 212-259.
[4] Nietzsche, Human, All Too Human, trans. R. J. Hollingdale (Cambridge University Press, 1986), Vol. I, Pt. 8, §438, p. 161.
[5] The actual line written by Voltaire reads: Quand la populace se mêle de raisonner, tout est perdu. It can be found in his Collection des lettres sur les miracles, Vol. 60D of his Œuvres complètes, ed. Olivier Ferret and José-Michel Moureaux (Voltaire Foundation / University of Oxford, 2018).
The original work of this title - a 232 page volume composed of various short writings from the period - was published in 1766.
