Arendt's primary contribution to the understanding of totalitarianism
lies mainly in her contention that the totalitarian movements, both
fascist and communist, provided an answer to the masses facing the
disintegration of traditional European society, with its hierarchies,
norms and accepted modes of behavior. Modernization and
democratization, it emerges, did not in fact elevate "the people" but
often, rather, the "masses" or the "mob" ? an observation already made
by conservative writers like Jose Ortega y Gasset.
---SPSmith
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