There is a powerful unifying force in a group during a peaceful protest. John Lewis certainly, Gandi and Martin Luther King and knew about as does Greta Thunberg and unifying protest leaders throughout history. We feel grace-filled unity when we sing together when we dance together when we applaud and or give a standing ovation for a wonderful speech, concert, or play. There is also a darker possibility in the power of crowd contagion.
Crowd theory states that in the crowd the individual identity and the capability to control behavior disappears and people are open to contagion. They are unable to resist any passing idea, and because intellect and rational thought can be obliterated, any passing emotion. They catch it like a cold and they go to the primitive limbic brain and have the spontaneity and the potential violence and enthusiasm of primate beings. That's why we so easily roar and cheer for our team and against others at football games. Anger is known in persuasion theory to be the strongest persuasive and most highly contagious emotion. And that explains rioting behavior. One person or a few people in a peaceful crowd that breaks away and does something in anger pulls the group. That also explains why a violent angry reaction by one officer from the police or military or prison guards or private police can spread to all the police.
Hitler Understood Crowd Theory and Emotional Contagion and he Used the Mob to Energize His Speeches.
Hitler was familiar with this and new you could take advantage of crowd mentality and manipulate a crowd to his own ends. He would have a stage in the middle of a town square, have marching bands push people tightly together to the center square from all the outlying streets, stir the crowd with marching music sometimes for as much as three hours before he spoke. He knew you can direct a crowd in that primitive emotional state, by simplifying his ideas, Appealing to emotions rather than intellect, exaggeration rather than fact, and by repeating the same message over and over again.
Hitler and Goebbels understood the power of anger and Isoopraxisim. Hitler is said to have gotten got the idea for his “fight song” and salute from American football. Specifically, the cheerleading and Harvard’s fight song so "Rah rah-rah," became “Sieg Heil” It is interesting that the nonverbal frenzy that is whipped up in a football stadium appealed to him and he wanted that energy. The nonverbal principal “ISOPRAXISM” states that nature animals are pulled to the strongest energy. That explains why fish swim together, birds fly in formation, the wave in American football, and is related to MOB behavior. Anger is the strongest “pulling” emotion. Meaning anger is the strongest persuasive or most highly contagious emotion
