Natural History of the Lynch Mob
The lynch mob should not be thought of as an aberration. It's more like a natural manifestation of our human nature. Christopher Boehm, for one, has argued that collective punishment of deviance played a key role in the human development of altruism and conscience. The most common and least drastic version is shaming of the perpetrator. It's not a minor punishment for most persons, and in fact was largely abandoned as a legal punishment in the US because it was thought too harsh. Hunter gatherer societies deal with more serious offenders, or those (like psychopaths) who ignore shaming, by ostracism or lynching (murder by the group) We have near contemporary evidence for group punishments among contemporary hunter gatherers, and highly suggestive circumstantial evidence of lynchings of deviants from thousands of years ago. The lynching was a key tactic of racial oppression in the United States until quite recently, and is prevalent in many parts of the world even today. ...