The crowd and the people

"Sometimes the people are untrue to themselves, but the crowd is a traitor to the people". observed Victor Hugo. The distinction between the crowd and the people is as old as democracy itself, and this must be borne in mind when defending freedom.

The crowd is a group; the people are a set of groups welded together by a common history. The crowd is homogeneous, its slogans are identical and chanted with a single voice, whereas the people are diverse and welcome within them the disparity of classes and opinions.

In short, the people are plural, and the crowd is singular. In fact, the sovereign people, guarantor of freedom, allows and recommends the expression of contradictory ideas, while the crowd, few and warlike, does not tolerate any dissent.

The people elect, the crowd lynch. On social networks, with complete impunity, the mob exercises what Tocqueville called the tyranny of the majority: while asserting that all opinions are tolerable, the mob censors, intimidates, prohibits, authorises, praises, bans. In a word, the people make the law by voting, but the mob makes the law by threatening. The people are the voting booth; the crowd is the street. The former defines legitimacy. The latter, shamelessly, attributes it to itself.

The people demand transparency, the crowd breaks down ministry’s entrances. This is the difference between the general will (otherwise known as the republican pact, on which democracy is based, and where the diversity of opinions is protected) and public opinion which, dreaming of imposing its law, believes it is doing a democratic job by threatening the legislator himself.

The crowd is the militant. The people are the voters. It is tempting to believe that the delegation of power is confiscation of power, consequently the crowd believes it is defending democracy every time it attacks one of its representatives. And because it can only hear its own noise, the crowd is convinced that the authorities are deaf whenever it doesn’t receive an answer. The people are the law of the majority.

The crowd is the law of numbers. The people accept the supremacy of the ballot box. The people do not care if the ballot is unfavourable to them. Thus the people demand to be consulted, while it is ample for the crowd to be flattered.

It was the people, sublime, who defended liberty at Valmy, although it was the crowd, which ignominiously slaughtered during the Saint Bartholomew's massacre.

The people are citizens, the crowd are sheep. By voting every four or five years, the people prevent a usurper from expropriating the nation through this act. Conversely, under the pretext of ruling always and endlessly, the crowd systematically ends up ceding power to a tyrant.

The mob is not the people, but it likes to think it is: that is when it threatens freedoms, scorns the presumption of innocence, steps over the Constitution, and want to absolve punishment from people who think like it. This is called populism. It occurs, like the plague, whenever a crowd claims to be the whole people, and substitutes fury and noise for universal suffrage. But here is the thing: "We do not want, says Hugo, a tyrant no more than we want a one only despot". The people are the right. The crowd is bigoted.