Masses distill perverted attitudes shared across all classes

Evidence

The masses do not inherit, as the mob does—albeit in a perverted form—the standards and attitudes of the dominating class, but reflect and somehow pervert the standards and attitudes toward public affairs of all classes. — Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 752

Categorization

Category: Definitional Content

• DEFINE: Defines the masses against the mob — masses absorb all classes’ attitudes rather than only the ruling class’s, clarifying a crucial conceptual distinction.

Related

• The masses stand outside class-based political representation and reflect all classes (similarity 0.91)
• Masses are people unintegratable into common-interest organizations (similarity 0.82)
• Mass movements recruit isolated individuals, not brutal backward masses (similarity 0.81)
• Highly educated individuals are especially drawn to mass movements, not merely the backward (similarity 0.81)
• Masses differ from classes by lacking common-interest articulation (similarity 0.79)
• Mass movements attract the highly cultured, not the culturally level average (similarity 0.79)
• Transforming classes into masses is the condition sine qua non of total domination (similarity 0.79)
• Mass atomization blocks interest-based appeals and produces self-sacrificing fanaticism (similarity 0.79)
• Totalitarian movements organize masses by sheer numbers rather than classes or citizen-opinion. (similarity 0.78)
• Totalitarianism transforms classes into masses and creates entirely new political institutions (similarity 0.78)
• Mass propaganda transforms ideology into a principle of self-definition for atomized individuals (similarity 0.78)

Broader Connections

• Mass propaganda transforms ideology into a principle of self-definition for atomized individuals #complicates (0.78) — Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 836