Demonic_ How the Liberal Mob Is Endangering America - Ann Coulter [1]
The Democratic Party is the party of the mob, irrespective of what the mob represents. Democrats activate mobs, depend on mobs, coddle mobs, publicize and celebrate mobs—they are the mob. Indeed, the very idea of a “community organizer” is to stir up a mob for some political purpose. “As so frequently happens when a crowd goes wild,” historian Erik Durschmied says, “there is always one who shouts louder and thereby appoints himself as their leader.”1 Those are the people we call “elected Democrats.”
The Democrats’ playbook doesn’t involve heads on pikes—as yet—but uses a more insidious means to incite the mob. The twisting of truth, stirring of passions, demonizing of opponents, and relying on propagandistic images in lieu of ideas—these are the earmarks of a mob leader.
Over and over again, one finds the Democrats manipulating the mob to gain power. It is official Democratic policy to appeal to the least-informed, weakest minded members of the public. Their base consists of soccer moms, actresses, felons, MSNBC viewers, aging Red-diaper babies, welfare recipients, heads-up-their-asses billionaires, and government workers—who can never be laid off. The entire party gave up on attracting the votes of white men decades ago. It’s easier to round up votes by frightening women about “assault weapons” and promising excellent free health care to non–English speakers. Yes, a free health care system that is so superior that Democrats exempt themselves and their friends from being in it.
Liberals frighten people about their health care in order to stampede through ObamaCare. They claim the Earth is overheating in order to seize taxpayer money for solar panels and compact fluorescent light-bulbs. They call out union thugs to force politicians to accede to insane benefits packages. They stage campaigns of calumny to get their way on gay marriage. Faddish ideas that would never have occurred to anyone fifty years ago—or even twenty years ago—are suddenly foisted on the rest of us by the liberal mobs.
Although the left in America is widely recognized as hysterical, unreasonable, and clueless, the “root cause” of these traits has generally been neglected. More than a century ago, Gustave Le Bon perfectly captured the liberal psychological profile in his 1896 book, The Crowd: A Study of the Popular Mind. Le Bon—a French physician, scientist, and social psychologist—was the first to identify the phenomenon of mass psychology. His groundbreaking book The Crowd paints a disturbing picture of the behavior of mobs. Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini used his book to learn how to incite a mob. Our liberals could have been Le Bon’s study subjects.
Even the left-wing Guardian has admitted that Le Bon’s study of crowd behavior was “possibly the most influential work of psychology ever written.” Presumably recognizing themselves in his psychological profile, liberals have recently tried to undermine Le Bon.
They have complained that he merely “articulated the propertied classes’ fear of the mob.” Who likes mobs? Renters? Window manufacturers? Rope salesmen? Liberals also objected that Le Bon did not hold the police accountable for a mob’s behavior—which is like demanding that we take into account the length of a rape victim’s skirt.2 It is revealing that liberals so fear Le Bon that they try to sully him as “controversial” and “reactionary.” (Those particular complaints, incidentally, were lodged by liberal activist George Monbiot, who has called for “citizen’s arrests” of former government officials from George W. Bush’s UN ambassador John Bolton to former British prime minister Tony Blair. No wonder he doesn’t like psychological studies of mob behavior.)3
It was all the usual claptrap, but the piercing truth of Le Bon’s study speaks for itself. Liberals wouldn’t go after him if, even a century