Mass atomization blocks interest-based appeals and produces self-sacrificing fanaticism

Evidence

The success of totalitarian propaganda, however, does not rest so much on its demagoguery as on the knowledge that interest as a collective force can be felt only where stable social bodies provide the necessary transmission belts between the individual and the group; no effective propaganda based on mere interest can be carried on among masses whose chief characteristic is that they belong to no social or political body, and who therefore present a veritable chaos of individual interests. The fanaticism of members of totalitarian movements, so clearly different in quality from the greatest loyalty of members of ordinary parties, is produced by the lack of self-interest of masses who are quite prepared to sacrifice themselves. — Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 815

Categorization

• DEFINE: Frames the mass condition as a chaos of isolated individual interests rather than organized social bodies.
• XREF: Core mechanism for the reader’s Islamophobia toolkit: how atomized masses are ripe for ideology-driven movements rather than interest politics.