The crowd

What Hacker News says

1. Chinchilla03Mar 2024
   In RL I never do such, as I know how to pretend and survive, for my own good. What I pointed out is that the dead guy did it with courage, with of course his life being the cost. Scaling it up I see something, and with the overall disappointment I find place to suit myself better in the future. And I don't plan to go a super long way with the majority anyway. This book is strongly recommended to read: "The Crowd" written by Gustave Le Bon. Tiktok swipers don't need to bother.
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2. jeffskilingNov 2022
   Gustave Le Bon's The Crowd is pretty comic when things like this happen. Can find things straight out of the headlines but from 1895.
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3. whoosh3Jul 2022
   Gustave Le Bon's The Crowd is another good reference.
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4. whatamidoingyoMay 2019
   >I hope young people who are familiar with "fake news" but not necessarily as familiar with the history of propaganda and censorship will study that history.

   What inspired me to learn about it was none other than a youtube video title "Rule From the Shadows: The Psychology of Control". Sure, it sounds like it'd be a conspiracy theory video, but it's far from it, listed all sources, and recommended books which were discussed.

   Those books being: The Crowd by Gustave Le Bon, Crystallizing Public Opinion, and Propaganda by Edward Bernays, Sigmund Freud's nephew.

   That video on youtube really changed the way I view the world, especially media and "groups" of people, like antifa, the alt-right, or what have you. When you see the words of Le Bon or Bernays in action, it sends a shiver down your back. The downside being that most people will assume you're crazy or paranoid if you start talking about Bernays or Le Bon.

   "The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society." - Edward Bernays

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5. trod1234Jun 2025
   In my opinion, you need to properly define ambiguous terms, one person's radicalized is another person's principle. The same as one person's terrorist is another person's freedom fighter (i.e. in Venezuela, and its losing fight against communism).

   That said, what people call DEI today is just a reformation of Maoism based in Marxism, and its goals follow hopes, and patterns that seek to engender social collectivist indoctrination in those subjected to it; following principles of thought reform/torture unironically also coming out of mainland China during Mao (1950s).

   Its particularly effective against the habitually complacent.

   The big trick of communism is to induce hope in people to narrow their focus to a circular but undefined viewpoint which can be falsely claimed as truth later, but which in reality lacks a property of what's called metaphysical objectivity in philosophy; an identity you need to prove anything through logic/critical thinking. This is how double-speak and double-think work.

   It also takes advantage of a lot of psychological blindspots we all have (by purposeful design), just like any other cult programming.

   Its important to note: Equity isn't equality, and its not properly defined.

   If you want to learn more about blindspots, I'd suggest starting with Robert Cialdini (Influence). Robert Lifton covers case studies of actual torture mechanics which can be derived (elements, structuring, clustering), which use these blindspots (albeit this material came before Cialdini published back in the 1950s).

   New Discourses covers the progression of DEI in damning detail albeit he sometimes becomes too wordy.

   With any regime change playbook you inherently have two roles being played simultaneously by a single cohort. You have a subgroup of antagonists, who perform and carry out acts to inflame which then are used by the other role to create a unifying narrative/platform for influence and insurgency.

   The fact that violence and rioting are occurring fairly often is sufficient evidence that DEI and its other forms have had some success as a memetic contagion.

   The harm always comes at you sideways without any visibility or attribution being possible. Are you better off today than you were a decade ago? Could you imagine a decade ago police firing teargas and rubber bullets indiscriminately into a peaceful assembly, or people firebombing cars with molotov cocktails? Which came first?, none of the news is saying and all the public narratives lean towards omitted lies in one form or another.

   No objective signals can be discernible or come out of channels jammed to the Shannon Limit.

   People go absolutely insane when they cannot maintain an internal consistent narrative/mental state and this happens without them realizing it (subliminally), and its been known for quite a long time going all the way back to the 1800s with Gustave Le Bon's The Crowd.

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