Democratic freedoms only function where citizens form groups or hierarchies

Evidence

Democratic freedoms may be based on the equality of all citizens before the law; yet they acquire their meaning and function organically only where the citizens belong to and are represented by groups or form a social and political hierarchy. The breakdown of the class system, the only social and political stratification of the European nation-states, certainly was “one of the most dramatic events in recent German history” and as favorable to the rise of Nazism as the absence of social stratification in Russia’s immense rural population (this “great flaccid body destitute of political education, almost inaccessible to ideas capable of ennobling action”19) was to the Bolshevik overthrow of the democratic Kerensky government. — Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 749

Categorization

• XREF: Directly scaffolds the Islamophobia field’s toolkit on how the breakdown of social stratification enables exclusionary mass movements; connects to later readings on how ‘the masses’ become available for totalitarian mobilization. — connects to: Formal democratic liberties rest on an unseen foundation of physical coercion — Michel Foucault, Discipline & Punish- The Birth of the…, 346; Larger social circles encourage individual freedom; smaller ones restrict it — Georg Simmel, on individuality and social forms_…, 642; Political freedom at the state level coexisted with extreme individual restriction in communal Russia — Georg Simmel, on individuality and social forms_…, 619 (+1 more)
• DEFINE: Establishes Arendt’s key distinction between formal legal equality and the organic group-belonging that gives democratic freedom actual function.
• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 749

Broader Connections

• Formal democratic liberties rest on an unseen foundation of physical coercion #expands (0.85) — Michel Foucault, Discipline & Punish- The Birth of the…, 346
• Political freedom at the state level coexisted with extreme individual restriction in communal Russia #contradicts (0.80) — Georg Simmel, on individuality and social forms_…, 619
• Larger social circles encourage individual freedom; smaller ones restrict it #exemplifies (0.75) — Georg Simmel, on individuality and social forms_…, 642
• A party can function as a general ideology superintending scattered rival groups #corroborates (0.75)