Popular Justice, Class Conflict, and the Lynching Spirit in France

Abstract

In American history, lynching has often been characterized as a racist practice to ensure white control over the black population in the South during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Yet race does not explain lynching in many other societies around the world, where extralegal punishment meted out by enraged communities has represented a practice of popular justice. Lynching incidents in today’s world may be called street justice, communal justice, or vindicte populaire and may appear as spontaneous outbreaks of mob violence or as organized vigilantism. In all of these cases, one factor plays a paramount role: the absence of an efficient system of criminal justice and of efficient state institutions in general. In most countries where lynching occurs, from Haiti to Bolivia to Western Africa, the state is weak and the police force is corrupt; the law simply does not protect common people. As a consequence, these people take the law into their own hands to reign in theft, banditry, or other perceived threats to their communities.