The Unthinking Horde: How the Pro-Palestine Movement in Australia Became a Weapon of Division

Crowds, as Gustave Le Bon noted, are rarely intelligent. The individual, when absorbed into the throng, is rendered something lesser than himself. He does not think, he reacts. He does not weigh evidence, he absorbs emotion. And above all, he does not hold himself to the moral standards he might embrace in solitude. This, perhaps, is the most alarming aspect of the pro-Palestine marches in Australia. They are not, as their participants believe, spontaneous uprisings of moral virtue, but demonstrations of mass psychology at its most dangerous.

The Collective Mind and the Loss of Reason

To watch these marches unfold is to witness the very essence of Le Bon’s The Crowd. The principles are all there: the individual becomes submerged in the group, his personal judgement evaporates, and he adopts slogans and sentiments not through logic but through sheer contagion. A chant begins, and thousands mindlessly repeat it. A new accusation is made—"genocide!" "apartheid!"—and suddenly, it is gospel.

This is how misinformation spreads. When Israel is accused of war crimes, of ethnic cleansing, of unspeakable horrors, the crowd does not pause to verify. It does not compare casualty numbers, does not check Hamas’s own charter, does not ask how many of its supposed "martyrs" were carrying weapons. It does not question why, for example, the Palestinian cause elicits such unparalleled outrage while China’s treatment of the Uyghurs, or Syria’s massacre of its own citizens, or Iran’s oppression of women, barely register on the protest circuit.

As Elias Canetti observed in Crowds and Power, the crowd is at its most powerful when it finds an enemy. The pro-Palestine marches have found theirs in Israel, but not only Israel. The Jews themselves are once again cast in their historical role of global scapegoat. It is an eerie and predictable repetition of history—whether in medieval Europe or 1930s Germany, the crowd has always found Jewish culpability an attractive proposition. And today, in the streets of Sydney and Melbourne, it finds expression in cries of "From the river to the sea," a call that, despite protestations to the contrary, means precisely what it has always meant: the removal of Israel altogether.

Rage Over Reality: The Politics of Revolution

Hannah Arendt, in On Revolution, makes the essential point that revolutions succeed or fail based on what they aim to achieve. The American Revolution, she argued, was a success because it sought freedom through stable institutions. The French Revolution, by contrast, was consumed by its own rage, turning inward until it collapsed into dictatorship and bloodshed. The revolutions of the 20th century—whether in Russia, China, or Cuba—followed similar patterns, leading not to justice but to totalitarianism. 

So what, exactly, do the pro-Palestine crowds in Australia seek? A ceasefire? Perhaps. But they demand it only from one side. Peace? If that were the case, why do so many of their slogans and banners call for Israel’s outright destruction? The truth is that these marches, like so many before them, are not about justice but about rage. They seek not an end to conflict but the fulfilment of ideological fantasies in which Israel—like the Tsar, like the French aristocracy, like all the hated enemies of past revolutions—is removed from the picture altogether.

And so, in the name of "justice," we see the inevitable descent into violent rhetoric. Jewish-owned businesses are targeted. Jewish students are harassed. The same marchers who declare themselves "anti-racist" fall eerily silent when actual antisemitism erupts in their midst. They are, as Arendt might have observed, prisoners of their own ideological blind spots.

The Inevitable End of the Unthinking Crowd

The tragedy of these movements is that they rarely realise they are being used. A crowd, as Canetti warned, will always find itself directed by those who understand it better than it understands itself. Radical activists, professional agitators, and ideological zealots know that once a movement is in motion, its followers will accept almost anything. That is why protests ostensibly about Gaza feature banners praising Hezbollah, why "peaceful demonstrations" descend into mob intimidation, and why, as these protests escalate, we will hear increasingly unhinged calls for action.

Le Bon’s warning is particularly relevant: crowds destroy far more easily than they build. They remove institutions but rarely replace them with anything functional. They demand justice but, in their frenzy, tear down the very systems capable of delivering it. And when the dust settles, the individuals who once comprised the movement, the students who thought they were fighting for a noble cause, the well-meaning activists who genuinely believed in "Palestinian liberation," will find that their efforts achieved nothing but further division, further hostility, and further erosion of whatever moral high ground they once imagined they held.

Conclusion: The Unravelling

What happens when the hysteria passes? What happens when the crowds disperse and the slogans fade? History tells us that when reality finally asserts itself, the crowd is left empty-handed. The pro-Palestine movement in Australia will not liberate Gaza, it will not end the war, and it will certainly not improve the lives of Palestinians. But it will have done something: it will have emboldened antisemites, it will have intimidated Jewish communities, and it will have stoked the flames of division in a country that prides itself on pluralism.

A revolution that fails to establish lasting institutions is a failure. A movement that defines itself by hatred is a catastrophe. The pro-Palestine marches sweeping Australia are not simply misguided—they are dangerous, because they show, once again, how the madness of crowds can turn even the well-intentioned into foot soldiers for something far darker than they ever intended.

And when it is all over, when the fury has abated, we will be left with the age-old question: how did so many good people find themselves on the wrong side of history—again?