The general will permits leader-people identification without elections

Evidence

It reintroduced the habit of metaphysical abstractions among the theorists of democracy, and by its doctrine of the general will it made possible the mystic identification of a leader with his people, which has no need of confirmation by so mundane an apparatus as the ballot-box. — Bertrand Russell, History of Western Philosophy, 2541

Categorization

• XREF: Directly feeds Russell’s claim that Hitler is an outcome of Rousseau; links back to pseudo-democratic dictatorships from paragraph 2479.
• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — Bertrand Russell, History of Western Philosophy, 2541