Talk:Lynch mob

Frankly, these guys aren't classified as lynch mobs, so there has to be some more specific definitions for it. (number of victims/perpetrators? purpose?)   01:32, 21 May 2009 (UTC)
 * But it's not a "specific" term. It's when a bunch of people get together to lynch (or otherwise pillory) one or more other people.  Usually there are more people in the lynch mob than there are victims.  The Comlumbine killings would never be confused for a lynch mob, they were a serial killing, or a rampage, perhaps.
 * The classic lynch mobs from which the term comes were, well, mobs of white people lynching (literally) a black, usually male, in the US. It would have also been a feature of "frontier justice" in the "wild west" - a town catches someone they think is, say, a cattle rustler, and engages in a cursory "trial" of some sort, then hangs the rustler, often with the same sort of pageantry and jollity of the aforementioned racial version.  02:00, 21 May 2009 (UTC)

Recent modern use of the term "Lynch Mob"
What is wrong with including the George Zimmerman trial as a case of the modern use of the term given that the published Washington Times article is an evidence that at least some people agree on the characterization?

Some now considered using "lynch mob" outside of the historical extrajudicial hanging of Black americans to be racist. Can someone explain why?