Originally Posted by
Ratman
No, that's missing the point. The point is that being in a crowd is one of the ways there are to at least temporarily lose one's individuality - one of others being the alcohol mentioned above. When you're in this state, you are confused by anything that's alien, anything that is personal, anything that is individual. Anyone who steps up to the podium and says words which are not in line with what you have been told, words which confuse your mind. A statue, every statue, is proof of individual, distinct accomplishment of one human, even if the accomplishment is in favor of the mob. As such, it cannot be allowed to exist in mob rule.
Literally every iconoclastic period of history is either a specific ruler banishing the memory of a specific previous ruler, or like this. At a time when society gets together to act in unison for whatever reason, people will destroy everything that depicts anything. It just happens.