The 21st century has seen the rise of crowd waves in various forms and witnessed destructive group behaviors, which are manifestly in contradiction with the image of human as a rational actor. The human was thought to learn from the terrible experiences of the masses of
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The 21st century has seen the rise of crowd waves in various forms and witnessed destructive group behaviors, which are manifestly in contradiction with the image of human as a rational actor. The human was thought to learn from the terrible experiences of the masses of the twentieth century, today appears as such an irrational de-individualized character that inspired us to rethink the effect of the group on the individual and the tremendous power of the crowd over human behavior. Crowd psychology emphasizes on the importance of passion and emotion in the study of human destructive behaviors in the group and seeks to identify the nature of human crowds and masses and the mechanisms of control of their power. The purpose of this essay is to use the views of Elias Canetti, as a profound observer of Fascism, Nazism and Stalinism, in order to cast light on the rise of crowds in the present century. The main question is what do Canetti perspectives say about the power of the crowds in our time?
We will, in response to this question, by qualitative content analysis of part of his works, show that Canetti views can be utilized to deal with crowd phenomena. In addition, for understanding the nature of the masses and crowds and to analyze their power and dynamics and to recognize the mechanisms of control of crowd power and mass uprisings in the 21st century. From the perspective of Canetti crowd psychology, we find that with the erosion of the mechanisms of containment of the crowd power, the danger of mass eruption not only has not banished from our world, but crowd power can appear more threatening and uncontrollable than before.
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