"I do accept that most of those who attended the stoning were there to see what in their view was justice being done."

That may be true or it may not be true in this case, we just do not have the information to know.

However it is also true is that there are indeed times when there is a social acceptance and approval of atrocities, whether on the local scale of lynchings in ordinary American towns at one time, or on the national scale of Nazi Germany, or in societies where public executions of "moral offenders" are carried out with official approval.

And there are many many examples of those kind of things happening in all kinds of societies around the world, throughout the course of history.

The question in such cases is the one Peter K asked - "how do entire communities of people descend to such levels of depravity?" And it is one about which I too would like to see a serious discussion here.