There is something sinister about mass gatherings whether in a good cause or bad. But causes that are dependent on mass gatherings, well, they are very sinister indeed.
Mass gatherings promote a sense of license never essayed by the participants on their own. There is a reason why heinous acts such as stoning, lynching, and epuration are mob recreations. The more participants in the crime socializes the criminality. The crime becomes ethically normative, no crime at all.
The guiding message of mass gatherings is kept deceptively simple so that the mass of the gathering coheres. Mobs are blunt tools used for blunting, not advancing, discursus.
We've seen the ease with which a million Frenchies can be called to the streets clamoring for peace. But what sort of peace is the peace mob about with its embrace of Islamofascists, anti-Semites, xenophobes, and amateur anarchists? Yet they are all trained to bleat, "Peace!"
If your cause is just, steer clear of fellow-traveling mobs. Pacal attributed all man's woes to an inability to sit alone and quiet in a room.
DGB