Mob rule

{{Short description|Democracy spoiled by demagoguery and the rule of passion over reason}} {{other uses|Mob Rule (disambiguation)}} {{Democracy}} {{Forms of government}} [[File:T2C, Fred Barnard, The Carmagnole (III,5).jpeg|thumb|right|''A Tale of Two Cities'', the mob in Paris dancing La Carmagnole, by Fred Barnard]]

'''Mob rule''' or '''ochlocracy''' or '''mobocracy''' is a pejorative term describing an oppressive majoritarian form of government controlled by the common people through the intimidation of authorities.{{Dubious|date=December 2025|reason=Against authorities or against the rule of law in the context of what today we call liberal democracy, that is, against laws that prevent the use of majority rule in a way that is unfair with minorities etcetera?}} Ochlocracy is distinguished from democracy or similarly legitimate and representative governments by the absence or impairment of a procedurally civil process reflective of the entire polity.<ref name="auto">{{cite journal|url=https://www.academia.edu/26803846|title=Ochlocracy in the Practices of Civil Society: A Threat for Democracy?|first=Jasmin|last=Hasanović|journal=Studia Juridica et Politica Jaurinensis|url-status=live|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180515004503/http://www.academia.edu/26803846/Ochlocracy_in_the_Practices_of_Civil_Society_A_Threat_for_Democracy|archive-date=2018-05-15}}</ref>{{Dubious|date=December 2025|reason=This is the only source cited in the lead section and it is explicitly contrary to liberal democracy and contrary to a neutral point of view}}{{Better source needed|date=December 2025}}

== Names == Ochlocracy comes from Latin {{lang|la|ochlocratia}}, from Greek {{lang|grc|ὀχλοκρατία}} (''okhlokratía''), from {{lang|grc|ὄχλος}} (''ókhlos'', "mass", "mob", or "common people") and {{lang|grc|κράτος}} (''krátos'', "rule").<ref>{{cite web|title=ochlocracy|url=https://www.thefreedictionary.com/ochlocracy|work=The Free Dictionary|access-date=2021-12-31}}</ref><ref>{{Cite web|title=ochlocracy {{!}} Etymology, origin and meaning of ochlocracy by etymonline|url=https://www.etymonline.com/word/ochlocracy|access-date=2021-12-31|website=www.etymonline.com}}</ref> An ochlocrat is one who is an advocate or partisan of ochlocracy. The adjective may be either ochlocratic or ochlocratical.

Ochlocracy is synonymous in meaning and usage to mob rule or mobocracy, which was coined in the 18th century from the sense of "mob" meaning the common rabble that arose from the Latin phrase {{lang|la|mobile vulgus}} ("the fickle crowd") in the 1680s during disputes over the United Kingdom's Glorious Revolution.

== Origin == Polybius appears to have coined the term ochlocracy in his 2nd century BC work ''Histories'' (6.4.6).<ref> {{cite web |url = https://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text.jsp?doc=Plb.+6.4&fromdoc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.01.0234 |title = Polybius, Histories, The Rotation of Polities |publisher = www.perseus.tufts.edu |access-date = 2008-03-29 |url-status = live |archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20080226215813/http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text.jsp?doc=Plb.+6.4&fromdoc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.01.0234 |archive-date = 2008-02-26 }} </ref> He uses it to name the "pathological" version of popular rule, in opposition to the good version, which he refers to as democracy. There are numerous mentions of the word "ochlos" in the Talmud, in which "ochlos" refers to anything from "mob", "populace", to "armed guard", as well as in the writings of Rashi, a Jewish commentator on the Bible. The word was first recorded in English in 1584, derived from the French ''ochlocratie'' (1568), which stems from the original Greek ''okhlokratia'', from ''okhlos'' ("mob") and ''kratos'' ("rule", "power", "strength").

Ancient Greek political thinkers{{who?|date=December 2025}} regarded ochlocracy as one of the three "bad" forms of government (tyranny, oligarchy, and ochlocracy) as opposed to the three "good" forms of government: monarchy, aristocracy, and "polity". They distinguished "good" and "bad" according to whether the government form would act in the interest of the whole community ("good") or in the exclusive interests of a group or individual at the expense of justice ("bad").{{Citation needed|date=September 2023}}

Polybius' predecessor, Aristotle, distinguished between different forms of democracy, stating that those disregarding the rule of law devolved into ochlocracy.<ref>Aristotle ''Politics'', Bk IV, Part IV</ref> Aristotle's teacher, Plato, considered democracy itself to be a degraded form of government and the term is absent from his work.<ref>{{cite encyclopedia |last=Blössner |first=Norbert |chapter=The City-Soul Analogy |editor-last=Ferrari |editor-first=G. R. F. |others=Translated from the German by G. R. F. Ferrari |title=The Cambridge Companion to Plato's Republic |publisher=Cambridge University Press |year=2007 }}</ref>

The threat of "mob rule" to a democracy is restrained by ensuring that the rule of law protects minorities or individuals against short-term demagoguery or moral panic.<ref>Jesús Padilla Gálvez, Democracy in Times of Ochlocracy, Synthesis philosophica, Vol. 32 No.1, 2017, pp. 167–178.{{cite journal |title=Demokracija u vremenu ohlokracije |journal=Synthesis Philosophica |date=23 August 2017 |volume=32 |issue=1 |pages=167–178 |doi=10.21464/sp32112 |last1=Padilla Gálvez |first1=Jesús |doi-access=free }}</ref> However, considering how laws in a democracy are established or repealed by the majority, the protection of minorities by rule of law is questionable. Some authors, like the Bosnian political theoretician Jasmin Hasanović, connect the emergence of ochlocracy in democratic societies with the decadence of democracy in neo-liberal Western societies, in which "the democratic role of the people has been reduced mainly to the electoral process".<ref name="auto"/>

==History== [[File:T2C, Fred Barnard, The Mob attacking Foulon de Doué, 22 July 1789 (II,22).jpeg|thumb|right|The mob attacking Joseph Foullon de Doué]] [[File:Red Summer 1919 Omaha Nebraska lynching.jpg|thumb|African-American lynched by white mob in Omaha, Nebraska, September 28, 1919, during the "Red Summer"]] During the late 17th and the early 18th centuries, English life was very disorderly. Although the Duke of Monmouth's rising of 1685 was the last rebellion, there was scarcely a year in which London or the provincial towns did not see aggrieved people breaking out into riots. According to the historian George Clark, "In Queen Anne's reign [1702–1714] the word 'mob', first heard of not long before, came into general use."<ref name="Clark">{{cite book |last=Clark |first=Sir George |author-link=George Clark (historian) |date=1972 |orig-date=1934 |title=The Later Stuarts, 1660–1714 |series=The Oxford History of England |publisher=Oxford University Press |pages=258–259 |isbn=0-19-821702-1 |url=https://archive.org/details/laterstuarts16600002clar/page/258/mode/1up}}</ref> With no police force, there was little public order. Several decades later, the anti-Catholic Gordon Riots swept through London and claimed hundreds of lives; at the time, a proclamation painted on the wall of Newgate prison announced that the inmates had been freed by the authority of "His Majesty, King Mob".

The Salem Witch Trials in colonial Massachusetts during the 1690s, in which the unified belief of the townspeople overpowered the logic of the law, also has been cited by one essayist as an example of mob rule.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://amath.colorado.edu/carnegie/lit/lynch/mobrule.htm|title=Mob Rule and Violence in American Culture|website=colorado.edu|url-status=dead|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20100221030848/http://amath.colorado.edu/carnegie/lit/lynch/mobrule.htm|archive-date=2010-02-21|access-date=2010-01-20}}</ref>

In 1837, Abraham Lincoln wrote about lynching and "the increasing disregard for law which pervades the country – the growing disposition to substitute the wild and furious passions in lieu of the sober judgment of courts, and the worse than savage mobs for the executive ministers of justice."<ref>{{Cite web |last=Lincoln |first=Abraham |author-link=Abraham Lincoln |date=27 January 1837 |url=http://www.classicreader.com/book/3237/12/ |title=Opposition to Mob-Rule |url-status=usurped |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20090109025333/http://www.classicreader.com/book/3237/12/ |archive-date=2009-01-09 |work=The Writings of Abraham Lincoln, Volume 1}}</ref>

Mob violence played a prominent role in the early history of the Latter Day Saint movement.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Arrington |first1=Leonard J. |last2=Bitton |first2=Davis |author-link1=Leonard J. Arrington |author-link2=Davis Bitton |name-list-style=amp|title=The Mormon Experience: A History of the Latter-Day Saints |date=1992 |publisher=University of Illinois Press |isbn=9780252062360 |page=45 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=oMQgrBcI998C&q=mob&pg=PA45 |access-date=23 June 2018}}</ref> Examples include the expulsions from Missouri, the Haun's Mill massacre, the death of Joseph Smith, the expulsion from Nauvoo, the Mountain Meadows Massacre, the murder of Joseph Standing, and the Cane Creek Massacre.<ref>{{cite web |title=Cane Creek Massacre |url=https://sites.google.com/site/tnmormonhistory/events/1884/cane-creek-massacre |website=TNMormonHistory |access-date=23 June 2018 |archive-date=14 February 2022 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220214103609/https://sites.google.com/site/tnmormonhistory/events/1884/cane-creek-massacre |url-status=dead }}</ref><ref>{{cite journal |last1=Wingfield |first1=Marshall |title=Tennessee's Mormon Massacre |journal=Tennessee Historical Quarterly |date=1958 |volume=17 |issue=1 |pages=19–36 |jstor=42621358 }}</ref> In an 1857 speech, Brigham Young gave an address demanding military action against "mobocrats".

==References== '''Notes''' {{reflist}} '''Bibliography''' * Libby, Ronald T. (2021), ''American Ochlocracy: Black Lives Matter & Mob Rule''. Miami: Twelve Tables Publisher {{ISBN?}} * [https://gutenberg.org/ebooks/14976 Mob Rule in New Orleans by Ida B. Wells-Barnett] * [http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?search=ochlocracy&searchmode=none EtymologyOnLine]

==External links== * {{wikiquote-inline}} * {{wiktionary-inline}}

Category:Totalitarianism Category:Democracy Category:Pejorative terms for forms of government Category:Crowd psychology Category:Warlordism Category:Societal collapse Category:Social crises Category:Government crises