Totalitarian leaders emerged from the mob before the masses they organized.

Evidence

It indicates the specific atmosphere, the general climate in which the rise of totalitarianism takes place. It should be remembered that the leaders of totalitarian movements and their sympathizers are, so to speak, older than the masses which they organize so that chronologically speaking the masses do not have to wait helplessly for the rise of their own leaders in the midst of a decaying class society, of which they are the most outstanding product. Those who voluntarily left society before the wreckage of classes had come about, along with the mob, which was an earlier by-product of the rule of the bourgeoisie, stand ready to welcome them. — Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 776

Categorization

• DEFINE: Distinguishes ‘mob’ (early by-product of bourgeois rule) from ‘mass man’ — a distinction the Islamophobia readings will need.
• XREF: connects to: Local township militancy arose indigenously before the ANC organized it — Charles Tilly, Regimes and Repertoires, 607