What accounts for an armed mob's presence, whereby it wants to intimidate unarmed men into acquiescing to the mob's demands? Mark Twain, writing in 1901 about a growing lynching mob mentality in the United States (q.v., his essay "The United States of Lyncherdom," a 3-part essay redacted and published posthumously in 1923), offered his insight as to what motivates men to join a lynching mob. As to his insight on that question, Twain seems to me to be largely 'spot on' in what he argues is the answer, with a possible exception that may be made on the basis that he may have somewhat exaggerated the numbers he used -- not that any such exaggeration that may exist in his numbers can throw a more favorable light on a culture supposedly Christian, but which was truly given to a lynching mob mentality. Besides that, there is a place in the quoted material that strikes me as being a bit too optimistic about what might lie secretly in the hearts of men before they are too easily whipped into a murderous frenzy by one lone agitator. Judge for yourselves. Here follow below Twain's words:
"It must be the increase [in lynching] comes of the inborn human instinct to imitate - that and man’s commonest weakness, his aversion to being unpleasantly conspicuous, pointed at, shunned, as being on the unpopular side. Its other name is Moral Cowardice, and is the supreme feature of the make-up of 9,999 men in the 10,000. I am not offering this as a discovery; privately the dullest of us knows it to be true.
"History will not allow us to forget or ignore this commanding trait of our character. It persistently and sardonically reminds us that from the beginning of the world not one revolt against a public infamy or oppression has ever been begun but by the one daring man in the 10,000, the rest timidly waiting, and slowly and reluctantly joining, under the influence of that man and his fellows from the other ten thousands....
.... "No mob has any sand in the presence of a man known to be splendidly brave.
"Besides, a lynching-mob would like to be scattered, for of a certainty there are never ten men in it who would not prefer to be somewhere else -- and would be, if they but had the courage to go. [I am not so convinced that Twain's observation just here is accurate. Maybe his observation is largely accurate; but be it even so that a mob's cravenness -- its shameful cowardice -- has led that mob into falling in with -- participating in -- a murderous agenda, that is not enough to excuse them their murderously immoral and spiritual failures. Why, unrepented cowardice is given in the Bible as one of the reasons why many men enter into "second death" (eternal annihilation), and precedes a number of other moral and spiritual failures, including murder that is also in the list of bad things that lead to "second death"; see Revelation 21:8.]
... "Then perhaps the remedy for lynchings comes to this: station a brave man in each affected community to encourage, support, and bring to light the deep disapproval of lynching hidden in the secret places of its heart - for it is there, beyond question. Then those communities will find something better to imitate - of course, being human they must imitate something. Where shall these brave men be found? That is indeed a difficulty; there are not three hundred of them in the earth. If merely physically brave men would do, then it were easy; they could be furnished by the cargo.
.... "No, upon reflection, the scheme will not work. There are not enough morally brave men in stock. We are out of moral-courage material; we are in a condition of profound poverty."
Apropos Mr. Twain's pessimism, we may say that his pessimism about the human race, despite the race's lip-service religiosity -- which he also justly pilloried on occasion --, was certainly shown to be even more depressingly justified by events throughout the world of the 20th century; and now, 2 decades on into the 21st, such pessimism is still justified. Witness the armed mob that recently stormed inside the Michigan Capitol building.
