Multitudes

Multitudes:How Crowds Made the Modern World

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In pursuit of the liberating powers of the crowd

Despite what politicians, philosophers and the press have long told us, every peaceful crowd is not a violent mob in waiting. Dan Hancox argues it is time to rethink long-held assumptions about crowd behaviour and psychology, as well as the part crowds play in our lives. The story of the modern world is the story of multitudes in action. Crowds are the ultimate force for change: the bringer of conviviality, euphoria, mass culture and democracy.

Behind the establishment’s long war against crowds is the work of eccentric proto-fascist Gustave Le Bon. Having witnessed the revolutionary Paris Commune, he declared the crowd barbaric, the enemy of all that was civilized. In the twentieth century, his theory influenced Mussolini, Hitler and Freud alike. It moulded the policing of our communities and the new industry of public relations, shaping our cities and politics.

From raucous football matches and raves to rubber-bullet-riddled riots, Dan Hancox takes us into the crowd’s pulsating heart to pose the questions that will define our age. Is the madness of crowds real? What did the January 6 insurrection on Capitol Hill share with the Nuremberg rallies? What fresh dangers are posed to free assembly by the surveillance society? And how has a radical new generation of psychologists begun to change everything – even the policing of protests?

Reviews

  • Multitudes will make you question everything you thought you knew about crowds, even the ones you’ve been a part of. Hancox delivers a compelling case for understanding crowds as an essential force in modern history and as a powerful way of connecting to our shared humanity’

    Leslie Kern, author of Feminist City
  • Hancox provides, in lucid and passionate prose, a compelling account of the new psychology of crowds. He shows an impressive command of the technical literature, the historical record and contemporary events, resulting in a broadside against the reflex condemnation of crowds that we hear so often in the mouths of politicians and journalists. He has thereby produced a book of great value that will be hard to refute or ignore. Read this book. And, when you have finished, you will never use the word ‘mob’ again.'

    Stephen Reicher, professor of psychology, University of St Andrews
  • Shaking us out of the pandemic's dogmatic social distancing, Dan Hancox inspires us to seek again a vital source of strength and creativity -- the joy of crowds

    Jodi Dean, author of Crowds and Party