Double morality reflects the bourgeois-citoyen split, not legitimate public-private separation

Evidence

Closely related to the attraction which the mob’s lack of hypocrisy and the masses’ lack of self-interest exerted on the elite was the equally irresistible appeal of the totalitarian movements’ spurious claim to have abolished the separation between private and public life and to have restored a mysterious irrational wholeness in man. … This division between private and public or social life had nothing to do with the justified separation between the personal and public spheres, but was rather the psychological reflection of the nineteenth-century struggle between bourgeois and citoyen, between the man who judged and used all public institutions by the yardstick of his private interests and the responsible citizen who was concerned with public affairs as the affairs of all. — Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 797

Categorization

• DEFINE: Distinguishes the bourgeoisie’s double morality (private interest masked as public virtue) from the legitimate separation of personal and public spheres — a distinction the concept of ‘esprit de sérieux’ names.
• XREF: The bourgeois-citoyen struggle is the foundational split that later readings will map onto how colonial and postcolonial subjects negotiate public conformity versus private fidelity — a scaffolding term for the Islamophobia toolkit. — connects to: Neoliberalism operates through a double truth doctrine separating masses from elites. — Philip Mirowski & Dieter Plehwe (eds.), The Road from Mont Pèlerin: The Making…, 2106