A solitary individual could temporarily prevail against the mob’s herd pressure

Evidence

The real achievement of Zola, which is hard to detect from his pamphlets, consists in the resolute and dauntless courage with which this man, whose life and works had exalted the people to a point “bordering on idolatry,” stood up to challenge, combat, and finally conquer the masses, in whom, like Clemenceau, he could all the time scarcely distinguish the mob from the people. — Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 324

Categorization

Category: Contrarian or Surprising Claims

• XREF: Zola’s lone resistance prefigures Arendt’s later meditation on solitary conscience vs. the crowd — a resonance with the Foundations Module’s treatment of individual moral agency.