Crowds or Mobs, Demonstrations or Riots

When is a demonstration a riot? When you disapprove. Crowds demonstrate and mobs riot. Got it?

Thus, those big assemblages of protesters in the streets of Hong Kong are crowds for most Western reporters and analysts, but mobs for the Chinese government and attendant media. The Ferguson, Mo., events are crowds or mobs depending on your point of view, and the events themselves are riots or demonstrations.

Whatever you call them, they're all over the place, sometimes in tiny European towns where all of a sudden there were demonstrations against fracking.

For the most part, demonstrations/riots fail to accomplish their announced goals (the most dramatic exception is the revolution in Ukraine). Indeed, they often strengthen their most hated targets (again, the Ukrainian case is significant, although the targets were external, the Russians). I was in France in the summer of 1968 when millions of people, led by radical students, marched down the Champs Elysees demanding the end of Charles De Gaulle's presidency. A week later, even more people marched down the same boulevard in support of De Gaulle, who briskly strengthened his position and put an end to the popular outcry.

Believe me, it sure looked like a revolution the weekend of the first march. But it lost. Big time. As such “Occupy” demonstrations have failed here of late, despite considerable sympathy from the reporters who cover them.

I suspect the Ferguson demonstrations will similarly fail, and reinforce the now largely negative impression left behind by the Occupiers. There are, however, some other places where Occupiers might do better, above all Hong Kong (there's a hashtag, #OccupyHK, for the movement, Occupy Central) and perhaps Caracas, Venezuela, where the country — atrociously managed to begin with — faces ruin from the crashing oil prices and where, as in Hong Kong, the opposition seems fairly well-led, a factor many tend to ignore.

Even if people take to the streets in large numbers, without proper leadership they're not likely to win.

On the other hand, if they are well-led, and do succeed, there's another danger: what used to be called “mob rule.” The crowds/mobs can become institutionalized in a kind of permanent enthusiasm that savvy leaders manipulate to their own advantage. Ask Robespierre, Mussolini and Hitler to write the footnotes.

Crowds/mobs virtually never demand tyranny, but they often get it.

Paradoxically, there is very little reportage on the ongoing mass challenges to the Iranian regime, challenges that are enormous, well-led and quite clearly threaten the tyrannical rule of Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and President Hassan Rouhani. The biggest recent eruption came on the day of the funeral for one of the country's most popular singers/composers, Morteza Reshaei. It was comparable to the monster protests following the stolen elections of 2009 (which in turn were larger than those that preceded the fall of the shah in 1979). There are many others, news of which can be found in specialized websites, ranging from the terribly repressed Ahwaz Arabs in the southern oil regions to citizens enraged by a wave of acid attacks against Iranian women.

These people don't get on TV, but they certainly get the attention of the regime's leaders. It wouldn't be entirely surprising if these crowds demonstrating for freedom eventually brought down a regime that insists they are rioting mobs.

Ledeen, the author of more than 30 books, is the Freedom Scholar at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. He was special adviser to former Secretary of State Alexander Haig and a consultant to the national security adviser during the Reagan administration.