Curbing ‘Mobocracy’ With Competence
Dealbook | Yale School of Management with some nuggets of wisdom

Sure, this has all made for far more interesting television coverage than technical budget details of interest primarily to policy wonks. Some media figures and political pundits have appeared to welcome the drama, drawing upon quaint pitchforked imagery of a populist revolt of Main Street righteousness against the greed and corruption of Wall Street.

But the populist movement was not as benign or romantic as some may think. The populists were more than merely a brand of agrarian American socialists; they were reactionary, violent mobs attacking technological advances, Catholics, Mormons, Jews and other minorities in a crusade to return America to a mythic rural age. As the Yale historian C. Vann Woodward noted, the populist leaders of the early 1900s were “the most ignorant, bigoted and reactionary forces in American life.”

--------------------------------

Hendrik Ibsen [sic], an advocate of early European democratization, became discouraged over what he termed “mobocracy” in which sluggish leaders allowed mass stampedes over individual rights. The close of his play “Enemy of the People” celebrates those who challenge the mob, stating, “The strongest man in the world is the man who can stand alone.”

(additional emphasis mine)