Bourgeois hypocrisy drove the intellectual elite toward flaunting amorality as revolt.

Evidence

Since the bourgeoisie claimed to be the guardian of Western traditions and confounded all moral issues by parading publicly virtues which it not only did not possess in private and business life, but actually held in contempt, it seemed revolutionary to admit cruelty, disregard of human values, and general amorality, because this at least destroyed the duplicity upon which the existing society seemed to rest. What a temptation to flaunt extreme attitudes in the hypocritical twilight of double moral standards, to wear publicly the mask of cruelty if everybody was patently inconsiderate and pretended to be gentle, to parade wickedness in a world, not of wickedness, but of meanness! The intellectual elite of the twenties who knew little of the earlier connections between mob and bourgeoisie was certain that the old game of épater le bourgeois could be played to perfection if one started to shock society with an ironically exaggerated picture of its own behavior. — Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 794

Categorization

• XREF: The hypocrisy-fuelled revolt mechanism connects to Arendt’s own later analysis in this book of the elite’s inadvertent complicity with the mob, and parallels the critique of avant-garde shock politics found elsewhere in left thought.