THE MOB AND THE ELITE
809
with the hysterical fanaticism of Hitler, will more resemble the stub–
born dullness of Molotov than the sensual vindictive cruelty of Stalin.
In this respect, the situation after the second World War in Eur–
ope does not differ essentially from that after the first; just as in the
twenties the ideologies of Fascism, Bolshevism, and Nazism were form–
ulated and the movements led by the so-called front generation, by
those who had been brought up and still remembered distinctly the
times before the war, so the present general political and intellectual
climate of postwar totalitarianism is being determined by a generation
which knew intimately the time and life which preceded the present.
This is specifically true for France, where the breakdown of the class
system came after the second instead of after the first War. Like the
mob men and the adventurers of the imperialist era, the leaders of
totalitarian movements have in common with their intellectual sympa–
thizers the fact that both had been outside the class and national
system of respectable European society even before
this
system broke
down.
This breakdown, when the smugness of spurious respectability
gave way to anarchic despair, seemed the first great opportunity for
the elite as well as the mob.
This
is obvious for the new mass leaders
whose careers reproduce the features of earlier mob leaders: failure
in professional and social life, perversion and disaster in private life.
The fact that their lives prior to their political careers had been fail–
ures, naively held against them by the more respectable leaders of
the old parties, was the strongest factor in their mass appeal. It seemed
to prove that individually they embodied the mass destiny of the
time, and that their desire to sacrifice everything for the movement,
their assurance of devotion to those who had been struck by catas–
trophe, their determination never to be tempted back into the security
of normal life, and their contempt for respectability were quite sin–
cere and not just inspired by passing ambitions.
The postwar elite, on the other hand, was only slightly younger
than the generation which had let itself be used and abused by im–
perialism for the sake of glorious careers outside of respectability,
as gamblers and spies and adventurers, as knights in shining armor and
dragon-killers. They shared with Lawrence of Arabia the yearning
for "losing their selves" .and the violent disgust with all existing stan–
dards, with every power that be.
If
they still remembered the "golden
