Gustave Le Bon on how to control people:

The 20th century saw the transition from the reign of kings to the reign of crowds. The catalyst for this change was a shift in ideas. Ideas implanted not by the limits of reason, but by what is most expedient.

Stripped of their identity, under a hypnotic trance, and vulnerable to suggestion, the crowded individual becomes “an automaton ceased to be guided by his will.” While some suggestions that pervade the crowd activate its destructive instincts, others inspire the coward to become a hero.

In either case, inspiration must strike at the right time to have the desired effect. With the right timing, crowds blindly accept extreme ideas. The only safety net is the individuals’ conservative unconscious qualities and heredity influences.

Influencers evade the crowd’s defenses by dumbing down complex ideas. The idea’s significance requires more or less time for old ideas to be erased or new ideas to sink in. When the crowd is finally convinced of an idea, underlying fanatical and intolerant sentiments rise to hyper-real images that motivate the initiation of revolutions and religions.

These images are reinforced by the individual’s early education in reciting and obeying. Indoctrination by lies prime the crowd into following ready-made illusions teasing an ideal.

The intoxicating effects of the illusion are amplified by the most faithful, be they subtle rhetoricians or movers of mountains. They hijack the crowd’s unconscious by constantly repeating simple, unbacked assertions. The contagiousness of these assertions is determined solely by its prestige. Prestige is an awesome force that dominates the mind.

Prestigious beliefs that form the basis of a civilization are unassailable tyrants of the unconscious. This is why prophets are bigger despots than warmongers. On the eve of civilizational collapse, the old regime’s power structures cling to life by diffusing a cacophony of ephemeral suggestions that eat at prestige and paralyze crowds. The faithful must be purged to sober up crowds.