What we have to remember about le Bon is that he was a skull measurer, he had a faith in biological determinism, the sort of thing that lead the flaccid minded and barrack dwelling to divide humanity into racial characteristics from savage to civilized, inferior to superior. His many interests included an invention for measuring skulls while in the field whether at an anthropological site of a bus stop his Pocket Cephalometer was a useful tool for measuring character.
As a disciple of the gospel of Transcendence as recorded by Kant, I am very unwilling to give any credence to le Bon's version of biological determinism, I do think we should give thought to le Bon's idea of a crowd being a 'biological event' capable of something very similar to contagion. The Crowd can riot, it can reduce a sense of isolation, it can bring together. We have looked at the Paris communes with their long tradition of the crowd that I think you might agree goes back to the Revolution of the 1790's and achieved yet another moment of glory in 1968.
I suspect the riot le Bon experienced might be categorized as a food riot. The 400,000 Crowd at Woodstock 1969, was more of a "happening" than a riot. The 1,500 Crowd at the Glastonbury Festival of 1970 felt like a happening and became the beginnings of an annual happening. There were the Nuremberg and Trump Rallies. And too it's difficult to avoid thinking of the Women of Greenham Common as a crowd which developed a unique series of behaviors built around peace. It does seem that people, especially those in power, are increasingly alarmed by uncontrolled crowds, but the contagions of the Crowd aren't always bad or ignoble.
In our new world of verbs, the contagions of the Crowd contain the resonances of becoming.
