THE MOB AND THE ELITE
819
world of the bourgeois class, hoped that the helpless masses would
help them into power, would support them when they attempted to
forward their private interests, that they would be able simply to
replace the older strata of bourgeois society and to instill into it the
more enterprising spirit of the underworld. Yet totalitarianism in
power learned quickly that enterprising spirit was not restricted to the
mob strata of the population, and that in any event such initiative
could only be a threat to the total domination of man. Absence of
scruple, on the other hand, was not restricted to the mob either and
anyway could be taught in a relatively short time. For the ruthless
machines of domination and extermination, the masses of co-ordinated
philistines provided much better material and were capable of even
greater crimes than so-called professional criminals, provided only
that these crimes were well organized and assumed the appearance
of routine jobs.
In all fairness to those among the elite, on the other hand, who
at one time or another have let themselves be seduced by totalitarian
movements, and who sometimes, because of their intellectual abilities,
are even accused of having inspired totalitarianism, it must be stated
that what these desperate men of the twentieth century did or did
not do had no influence on totalitarianism whatsoever, although it did
play some part in earlier, successful, attempts of the movements to
force the outside world to take their doctrines seriously. Wherever
totalitarian movements seized power, this whole group of sympathizers
was shal{en off even before the regimes proceeded toward their greatest
crimes. Intellectual, spiritual, and artistic initiative is as dangerous to
totalitarianism as the gangster initiative of the mob, and both are
more dangerous than mere political opposition. The consistent per–
secution of every higher form of intellectual activity by the new mass
leaders springs from more than their natural resentment against
everything they cannot understand. Total domination does not allow
for free initiative in any field of life, for any activity that is not
entirely predictable. Totalitarianism in power invariably replaces all
first-rate talents, regardless of their sympathies, with those crackpots
and fools whose lack of intelligence and creativity is still the best
guarantee of their loyalty.
