LE BONOVA PSIHOLOGIJA GOMILE I POSTISTINA
LE BON’S CROWD PSYCHOLOGY AND POST-TRUTH

Summary/Abstract: The phenomenon of post-truth, in which truth (or facts or the best scientific evidence) is brushed aside in public debates, has recently caught the eye of many philosophers, who typically see it as a threat to deliberative democracy. In this paper, it is argued that Gustave Le Bon’s remarks on crowd psychology, which had been very popular in past (and brushed aside later on), might be relevant for a better understanding of psychological mechanisms that lead to post-truth. According to Le Bon, crowds are often irrational, whereas those who try to convince them to do something should use specific techniques of persuasion, such as affirmation, repetition, contagion and prestige, of which the last one can be undermined either by fiasco (the fastest way), or by critique (a bit slower, but nonetheless effective way). It is the age of posttruth that goes towards the neutralization of any critique (Le Bon himself considered such neutralization devastating for democratic societies), which has been, according to some authors, affected to a great extent by technological innovations in media, such as social media that some authors consider anti-social due to their negative impact on society. I argue that Le Bon’s insights might be useful to members of scientific and philosophical community in their attempts to eliminate the spreading of quasi-scientific views in public discourse.

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