Totem, taboo, demon worship, etc., are clearly primitive crowd-phenomena. Freud's main argument in this book consists in showing the likeness between these phenomena and the compulsion neurosis. The projection of unconscious hostility upon demons is by no means the only sort of which crowds both primitive and modern are capable. Neither must the hostility always be unconscious. Projection is a common device whereby even normal and isolated individuals justify themselves in hating. Most of us love to think evil of our enemies and opponents. Just as two fighting schoolboys will each declare that the other "began it," so our dislike of people often first appears to our consciousness as a conviction that they dislike or entertain unfriendly designs upon us. There is a common type of female neurotic whose repressed erotic wishes appear in the form of repeated accusations that various of her men acquaintances are guilty of making improper advances to her. When the "white slavery" reform movement swept over the country--an awakening of the public conscience which would have accomplished a more unmixed good if it had not been taken up in the usual crowd-spirit--it was interesting to watch the newspapers and sensational propagandist speakers as they deliberately encouraged these pathological phenomena in young people. The close psychological relation between the neurosis and the crowd-mind is shown by the fact that the two so frequently appear at the same moment, play so easily into each other's hands, and are apparently reactions to the very same social situation.
In Brill's example of paranoia, it will be remembered that the patient's delusions of persecution took the form of such statements as that the "gang" had intrigued at Washington to prevent his appointment as ambassador, that certain of his relatives were in a "conspiracy against him." How commonly such phrases and ideas occur in crowd-oratory and in the crowd-newspaper is well known to all. We have already seen that the crowd in most cases identifies itself with "the people," "humanity," "society," etc. Listen to the crowd-orator and you will also learn that there are all sorts of abominable "conspiracies" against "the people." "The nation is full of traitors." The Church is being "undermined by cunning heretics." "The Bolshevists are in secret league with the Germans to destroy civilization." "Socialists are planning to corrupt the morals of our youth and undermine the sacredness of the home." "The politicians' gang intends to loot the community." "Wall Street is conspiring to rob the people of their liberties." "England plans to reduce America to a British colony again." "Japan is getting ready to make war on us." "German merchants are conducting a secret propaganda intending to steal our trade and pauperize our nation." "The Catholics are about to seize power and deliver us over to another Inquisition." "The liquor interests want only to make drunkards of our sons and prostitutes of our daughters." And so on and so forth, wherever any crowd can get a hearing for its propaganda. Always the public welfare is at stake; society is threatened. The "wrongs" inflicted upon an innocent humanity are rehearsed. Bandages are taken off every social wound. Every scar, be it as old as Cromwell's mistreatment of Ireland, is inflamed. "The people are being deceived," "kept down," "betrayed." They must rise and throw off their exploiters, or they must purge the nation of disloyalty and "anarchy."