Editing Gustave Le Bon (section)

== Influence ==
[[File:Jules cesar.jpg|thumb|"The type of hero dear to a crowd will always have the semblance of a [[Caesarism|Caesar]]. His insignia attracts them, his authority overawes them, and his sword instills them with fear."]]
[[George Lachmann Mosse]] claimed that fascist theories of leadership that emerged during the 1920s owed much to Le Bon's theories of crowd psychology. [[Adolf Hitler]] is known to have read ''The Crowd'' and in ''[[Mein Kampf]]'' drew on the [[propaganda techniques]] proposed by Le Bon.<ref>{{cite book|first=Geoff|last=Eley|title=Citizenship and National Identity in Twentieth-century Germany|publisher=Stanford University Press|date=2008|page=284}}</ref><ref>{{cite book|first=Jay Y.|last=Gonen|title=The Roots of Nazi Psychology: Hitler's Utopian Barbarism|publisher=University Press of Kentucky|date=2013|page=92}}</ref> [[Benito Mussolini]] also made a careful study of Le Bon.<ref>{{harvnb|van Ginneken|1992|p=186}}</ref>

Le Bon was widely read within the [[Committee of Union and Progress]] in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Philosophical and military leaders who would later lead the [[Young Turk Revolution]], such as [[Ahmet Rıza]] and [[Enver Bey]], took inspiration from Le Bon and movements such as [[Social Darwinism]] to define their elitist and authoritarian approach to politics, as well as their advocacy of [[revolution from above]].<ref>{{cite book|last=Hanioğlu|first=M. Șükrü|title=Preparation for a Revolution: The Young Turks, 1902–1908|year=2001|publisher=Oxford University Press|isbn=9780199771110|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=nNdKQfEdyvgC&q=Gustave%20Le%20Bon|pages=308{{ndash}}314}}</ref>

Some commentators have drawn a link between Le Bon and [[Vladimir Lenin]] / the [[Bolsheviks]].<ref>{{harvnb|Ohlberg|2014|p=162}}</ref>

Just prior to [[World War I]], [[Wilfred Trotter]] introduced [[Wilfred Bion]] to Le Bon's writings and [[Sigmund Freud]]'s work ''[[Group Psychology and the Analysis of the Ego]]''. Trotter's book ''Instincts of the Herd in Peace and War'' (1919) forms the basis for the research of both Wilfred Bion and [[Ernest Jones]] who established what would be called [[group dynamics]]. During the first half of the twentieth century, Le Bon's writings were used by media researchers such as [[Hadley Cantril]] and [[Herbert Blumer]] to describe the reactions of subordinate groups to media.

[[Edward Bernays]], a nephew of [[Sigmund Freud]], was influenced by Le Bon and Trotter. In his influential book ''[[Propaganda (book)|Propaganda]]'', he declared that a major feature of [[democracy]] was the manipulation of the electorate by the [[mass media]] and [[advertising]]. Some have claimed that, [[Theodore Roosevelt]] and [[Charles G. Dawes]] and many other American [[Progressivism in the United States|progressives]] in the early 20th century were also deeply affected by Le Bon's writings.<ref>{{cite book|first=Stuart|last=Ewen|title=PR!: A Social History of Spin|publisher=Basic Books|date=1996|page=63}}</ref>