Demonic: How the Liberal Mob Is Endangering America

Written by Ann Coulter

Narrated by Ann Coulter

The demon is a mob, and the mob is demonic. The Democratic Party activates mobs, depends on mobs, coddles mobs, publicizes and celebrates mobs—it is the mob. Sweeping in its scope and relentless in its argument, Demonic explains the peculiarities of liberals as standard groupthink behavior. To understand mobs is to understand liberals.
 
In her most provocative book to date, Ann Coulter argues that liberals exhibit all the psychological characteristics of a mob, for instance:
 
Liberal Groupthink: “The same mob mentality that leads otherwise law-abiding people to hurl rocks at cops also leads otherwise intelligent people to refuse to believe anything they haven’t heard on NPR.”

Liberal Schemes: “No matter how mad the plan is—Fraternité, the ‘New Soviet Man,’ the Master Race, the Great Leap Forward, the Cultural Revolution, Building a New Society, ObamaCare—a mob will believe it.”

Liberal Enemies: “Instead of ‘counterrevolutionaries,’ liberals’ opponents are called ‘haters,’ ‘those who seek to divide us,’ ‘tea baggers,’ and ‘right-wing hate groups.’ Meanwhile, conservatives call liberals ‘liberals’—and that makes them testy.”

Liberal Justice: “In the world of the liberal, as in the world of Robespierre, there are no crimes, only criminals.”

Liberal Violence: “If Charles Manson’s followers hadn’t killed Roman Polanski’s wife, Sharon Tate, Clinton would have pardoned him, too, and he’d probably be teaching at Northwestern University.”
 
Citing the father of mob psychology, Gustave Le Bon, Coulter catalogs the Left’s mob behaviors: the creation of messiahs, the fear of scientific innovation, the mythmaking, the preference for images over words, the lack of morals, and the casual embrace of contradictory ideas.

Coulter traces the history of the liberal mob to the French Revolution and Robespierre’s revolutionaries (delineating a clear distinction from America’s founding fathers), who simply proclaimed that they were exercising the “general will” before slaughtering their fellow citizens “for the good of mankind.”

Similarly, as Coulter demonstrates, liberal mobs, from student radicals to white-trash racists to anti-war and pro-ObamaCare fanatics today, have consistently used violence to implement their idea of the “general will.”

This is not the American tradition; it is the tradition of Stalin, of Hitler, of the guillotine—and the tradition of the American Left.

As the heirs of the French Revolution, Democrats have a history that consists of pandering to mobs, time and again, while Republicans, heirs to the American Revolution, have regularly stood for peaceable order.

Hoping to muddy this horrifying truth, liberals slanderously accuse conservatives of their own crimes—assassination plots, conspiracy theorizing, political violence, embrace of the Ku Klux Klan. Coulter shows that the truth is the opposite: Political violence—mob violence—is always a Democratic affair.

Surveying two centuries of mob movements, Coulter demonstrates that the mob is always destructive. And yet, she argues, beginning with the civil rights movement in the sixties, Americans have lost their natural, inherited aversion to mobs. Indeed, most Americans have no idea what they are even dealing with.
           
Only by recognizing the mobs and their demonic nature can America begin to defend itself.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Penguin Random House Audio Publishing Group
• Release date: Jun 7, 2011
• ISBN: 9780307878823

Reviews for Demonic

[regularguy5mb · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

In Demonic, Ann Coulter examines how mob mentality damages causes of social change (using the works of Gustave Le Bon as a base), her prime example being the horrors of the French Revolution. However, she then blames "liberals" for all mob thought and action, sending her argument right into the mud pit of name-calling and snide commentary.

Apparently, liberals (meaning all Democrats throughout time, because party interests apparently never shift) are the sole cause of all mob mentality in America. Republicans are reasoned and reserved, but Democrats? A bunch of angry, irrational, rabble-rousers. What makes for such a stark difference? Well, Republicans respect law and order and believe in God.

Coulter creates a fact-based argument that liberals are Godless, communist-loving heathens who want to kill your babies and force you to have premarital gay sex with as many partners as they deem fit... if by "fact-based" you mean a series of quotes from the media and certain individuals who happen to call themselves Democrat (a term, like Republican, that has lost all significant meaning over the years). Add to that tagging in the acts of every disturbed individual from John Wilkes Booth, to Charles Manson, to Timothy McVeigh (all card-carrying liberals, according to Coulter), and there you have it, Democrats are the party of Lucifer (this is actually the argument she makes in the final chapter, I'm not even kidding).

The main issue I have with this book, other than rejecting the overall premise, is that denying that conservatives (or Christians in general) are exempt from any sort of mob mentality denies that they are just as human and just as capable of being misled. Of course, that kind of admission could cost her book sales and TV appearances, so best not. Shall we note the lack of mention of the Salem Witch Trials? No mob mentality there, surely.

Reading past her attempts at vilifying the vast majority of my friends and family (liberals all) with blanket statements meant to rile her base, her main complaint seems to be with the media (but only the "Liberal Media"). If the premise of this book had been that the media can often lead to the baiting of the mob, I would wholeheartedly agree with her. I stopped following TV news because of the fearmongering engaged in almost nightly by most presenters. Unfortunately, Ms. Coulter is just as guilty of fearmongering and inciting a potential mob mentality in this very book (and numerous TV appearances) when she claims that liberals are going to destroy America and conservatives need to "overreact." (That is the final line of the book, by the way)

The real problem with this book and others like it, from either side of the aisle, is that the two party system has turned into a shouting match of "our side is better than your side, nyah, nyah, nyah." It's almost impossible to tell moderate left from right anymore and those on the fringes of each party are so crazy, nobody wants anything to do with them (unless it'll really piss off the other guys). The real solution here is to dissolve the two existing parties and start over with something new (this idea will only add fuel to Ms. Coulter's fire of a "liberal attempt to destroy the existing, working system," but c'est la vie). Actually, why not return to something old? When Washington was first elected President, there were no parties, and even when the parties did first form, the rule was that the guy with the most votes became President, runner-up was VP. Let's try that. You have to admit, it would be interesting.

Also, while both Democrats and Republicans yell at each other about who is better, they forget that Jefferson's original party was called the "Democratic-Republicans." So hey, maybe those names aren't really working the way you want them to.

I just wonder what would happen if the only side to the argument was the American side with a healthy difference of opinion intended for rigorous debate, you know, like the Founders envisioned.

Oh, and in the unlikely event of Ms. Coulter actually reading this review, and your editor is still looking for those commas, you can probably find a few extra right here in this review (I often feel I overuse them, but perhaps not).

[catquilt-1 · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

I didn't finish this book. I wanted to like it but as usual, her book has a lot of snark. I don't mind listening to snark, like in a radio interview but for some reason, reading it is not enjoyable.

[histreader · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

In a world where Republicans feel compelled to seem reasonable, acquiescing to admit ~ gasp ~ George W. Bush made a few mistakes, Ann Coulter refuses to play nice. And how refreshing it is!

In her signature fact-laden sardonic style, Ms. Coulter lays out the facts and proves that Liberals have been the violent and irascible upstarts.

Demonic is a chronology of mob action carried out by the Left. Beginning with the serial revolutions of the French, as a pale imitation of the American Revolution, she provides two chapters detailing the misguided and meandering venture of murderous mayhem in the guise of liberty. Outlining French attempts at recreating man and society, practically all its leaders were engulfed by the mobs they helped rile and executed. The next chapter is a side-by-side comparison of the reasoned and debated, transparent shedding of British monarchy from American shores.

The book is fueled by an undercurrent of French psychologist Gustave Le Bon and his seminal work, The Crowd: A Study of the Popular Mind. Le Bon's notions of mob action and mindset are applied to Ann Coulter's view of modern day Leftists and politicians. Her use of the 1896 book was so convincing, I purchased a copy for myself.

What is lamentable is that she argues Liberals are unreasonable, which only means they will not be able to see her profile of them is spot-on.

[br77rino · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Ann Coulter compares the liberal left, rather persuasively, to a mob. She makes a specially strong comparison between the modern left and the mob that enacted the French Revolution, with extensive reference to Gustave Le Bon's 1895 work "The Crowd: A Study of the Popular Mind."

[tuckerresearch · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Of the Coulter books I've read, this one is the best. Coulter's realization that liberals think like a mob comes as a revelation. Starting with Gustave Le Bon's pioneering work on mob psychology, The Crowd, she notes the similarities between a rabble mob and the ways liberals think. It's an intriguing thesis, and this serious undergirding makes this her best book yet.

[renzomalo · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Ms. Coulter’s “Demonic: How the Liberal Mob is Endangering America” was inspired by Gustave Le Bon’s 1896 book “The Crowd: A Study of the Popular Mind” and is a surprisingly entertaining (for a conservative) and informative book that is well researched, well documented and laced with witty, sarcastic humor throughout. A fast read, especially through the history of the French Revolution, which Ms. Coulter correctly claims is not properly studied in our classrooms, and, when mentioned at all, is improperly likened to our American Revolution. She correctly points out that the only thing the two had in common was the word “revolution:” complete opposites otherwise.

Theirs was a centralized governmental bloodbath that attempted to destroy the Monarchy (they succeeded), to outlaw Christianity and any non-state religion, (they failed) and eventually wound up devouring their own. Maximilien Robespierre, one of the early, prominent leaders of the French Revolution, was summarily declared an outlaw on July 27, 1794 and was sent to the guillotine with 21 others the following day, just two weeks past the fifth anniversary of the storming of the Bastille on July 14, 1789. The American Revolution on the other hand was, as Lincoln said, “dedicated to the proposition that all men were created equal" with the rights of the individual at its core. Night-and-day difference.

She goes on to validate LeBon’s observations with examples from SEIU rallies, Wisconsin teacher’s protests and the mass media’s sycophantic and sometimes mindless support of leftist views despite contradictory information: Clarence Thomas was a misogynistic sex fiend while Ted Kennedy was merely “playful.”

However, as entertaining as it was, Ms. Coulter is, unfortunately, preaching to the choir. For a liberal/leftist to read this would be like me plunking down my hard-earned bucks on a Michael Moore “documentary.” Not a chance, but it’s on the best seller list for a reason. Four stars for good information and many laughs.