Nice list of writers. People are crazy aren’t they?
Artists are ‘by nature’(?) less bound by the bourgeois limits of good taste and acceptable behaviour than you or I may be. We also have extreme parochials of said limits, who disregard reality and view issues through an idealistic lens of how things ‘should be’ according to their moralistic stance. These parochial moralists exist on both sides of the political spectrum (Tradition v Change). Most people are somewhere in between.
A point of caution though is to take care with conflation. What I mean is: We don’t regard all writers as homosexual pedophiles. Hence we don’t refer to authors as the ‘pedophile mob’.
In the same way we may want to look at each case of protest against statues in public spaces or namings of public buildings on its own merits (but the products of artists should always be available in an open and free society, is my parochial moral stance).
Shoving each protest-action under a 'mob’-umbrella, weakens the argument.
For example, I understand that certain people have problems with certain statues in public places that represent people whose identity is by and large connected to the horrors inflicted on other people. Statues in public places have the role of representing exemplary figures that we should be proud of as a society.
In 1937-Germany it would be ok to have a Statue of Hitler, because that represented the power at the time.
Today, a statue of Hitler by a great sculptor, might have a place in a museum.
If a statue of Hitler were on public land today, quite a few of us would object to it.
But I am sure you agree with me that we wouldn’t call these protestors a ‘woke mob’.
Thus we should distinguish between having a copy of Mein Kampf in the university-library and the naming the building after its author.
The ones objecting to the building-name, wouldn’t be part of some ‘woke mob’, but may have a valid opinion that requires action. And action for change is not something that sits in the DNA of those in charge because they are in charge thanks to how things are. Thus some statues may get toppled by protestors. Sometimes we may react with ‘mwah’ other times with ‘WTF!?’.
King George probably regarded the Americans opposing British taxes as a ‘mob’, instead of evaluating the argument. The British lost their most important colonies, because he regarded those with valid arguments as a ‘mob’.
