Bourgeois society lionized a criminal as its first political hero

Evidence

The most modern figure on the side of the Anti-Dreyfusards was probably Jules Guérin. Ruined in business, he had begun his political career as a police stool pigeon, and acquired that flair for discipline and organization which invariably marks the underworld. This he was later able to divert into political channels, becoming the founder and head of the Ligue Antisémite. In him high society found its first criminal hero. In its adulation of Guérin bourgeois society showed clearly that in its code of morals and ethics it had broken for good with its own standards. — Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 317

Categorization

• XREF: Prototype of the criminal-mob-leader figure Arendt later argues defines totalitarian movements—the underworld skills of discipline repurposed as political method.
• SEED: An essay angle: the underworld as the original training ground for modern political organization—Guérin as case study of criminal skills migrating into fascist politics.