On Wednesday’s ‘The Mark Levin Show’, Levin talked about how mass movements devour individual identity and uniqueness, rendering people indistinguishable while assigning group identities based on race, age, or income to foster class distinctions and divisions. These movements attract disenchanted, disaffected, and maladjusted individuals who blame external factors like the system or others for their conditions, lured by utopian promises and criticisms of society, where improving their lot ties to the cause and disparaging the successful becomes a tactic to instill meaning and self-worth. Ultimately, these movements rely on deceit, propaganda, intimidation, and force, leading to scapegoating, violence, and totalitarianism:

MARK LEVIN: MARK LEVIN: I’ve encouraged you to take a look at my book, American Marxism, from four years ago to get a feel for what’s taking place today. It’s actually quite prescient, but it’s not hard to be prescient when you’re looking at Marxism or fascism or those things because the world has experienced them. The question is, here, we’ve not experienced them. And in Chapter 2, I talk about breeding mobs. Now, even though I’m writing about American Marxism, as you’ll see, it would apply to any kind of ism that is totalitarian in nature. This is Chapter 2, Breeding Mobs. Many of you have the book. Mass movements tend to devour the individual in two ways. I want you to be thinking of Mondami, Bernie Sanders, you know, AOC, Marxism, Islamism. I also want you to be thinking of the fascists and neo-fascists who I’ve been exposing as thoroughly as possible. I want you to be thinking about Fuentes and Bannon and Alex Jones and Tucker and their supporters who give them a free ride, the Megyn Kellys of the world and those people. Mass movements attempt to devour the individual in two ways. Consume his identity and uniqueness, thereby making him indistinguishable from the masses, but also assigning him a group identity based on race, age, income, etc., to draw class distinctions. This way the demagogues and propagandists can speak to the well-being of the people as a whole while dividing them against themselves, thereby stampeding them in one direction or another as necessary to collapse the existing society or rule over the new one. And who among us is attracted to such mass movements? Again, I noted in my prior book, Ameritopia, a receptive audience is found among the society’s disenchanted, disaffected, dissatisfied and maladjusted, who are unwilling or unable to assume responsibility for their own real or perceived conditions, but instead blame their surroundings, the system and others. They are lured by the false hopes and promises of utopian transformation and the criticisms of the existing society to which their connection is tentative or non-existent. Improving the malcontents lot becomes linked to the utopian cause. Moreover, disparaging and diminishing the successful and accomplished becomes an essential tactic. No one should be better than anyone else regardless of the merits or value of his contribution. And by exploiting human frailties, frustrations, jealousies and inequities, a sense of meaning and self-worth is created in the malcontents otherwise unhappy and directionless life. As you can see, this applies to the Marxists and the fascists. Furthermore, in mass movements, the individual is inconsequential as a person, useful only as an insignificant part of an amalgamation of insignificant parts. He is a worker, part of a mass, nothing more, nothing less. His existence is soulless. Absolute obedience is the highest virtue. After all, only an army of drones is capable of building a rainbow to paradise. Almost a century ago, French philosopher and essayist, Julien Benda, observed that mass movements form frequently around individuals who share the same political hatred. Got that? The same political hatred. He wrote, thanks to the progress of communication and still more to the group spirit, it’s clear that the holders of the same political hatred now form a compact impassioned mass. Every individual of which feels himself in touch with the infinite numbers of others. Whereas a century ago, such people were comparatively out of touch with each other and hated in a scattered way. I’ve been talking about the podcasting and the internet, ladies and gentlemen, and the dangers it poses. There’s simply no question about that. He said, be asserted that these coherences will tend to develop still further. For the world of group is one of the most profound characteristics of the modern world. He wrote this a hundred years ago. Which even in the most unexpected domains, for instance, the domain of thought, is more and more becoming the world of ligs, of unions, and of groups. It is necessary to say that the passion of the individual is strengthened by the feeling itself in proximity to these thousands of similar passions. The individual bestows a mystic personality on the association of which he feels himself a member. And gives it a religious adoration, which is simply the deification of his own passion and no small stimulates to its intensity. That’s genius, don’t you think, Mr. Producer? Benda also concluded that such movements, because that’s what’s going on today, right now. Benda also concluded that such movements are often cult-like. He wrote, the coherence just described might be called a surface coherence. But there is added to it a coherence of essence. For the very reason that the holders of the same political passion form a more compact impassioned group. They also form a more homogeneous impassioned group. Which the individual ways of feeling disappear. The zeal of each member more and more takes on the color of the other. And so you see this Jew hatred. You see this Christian hatred. You see this American hatred. And it builds on it and builds on it and builds on itself. Absolute brilliance. Let’s go on. I wrote nearly a decade ago that these mass movements, that is I wrote, are intolerant of diversity, uniqueness, debate. For their purpose requires a singular focus. There can be no competing voices or causes slowing or obstructing society’s long and righteous march. They rely on deceit, propaganda, dependence, intimidation and force. And I go on in that regard. Let me continue. I’m not going to read the whole chapter, but I think it’s very, very important. If you have the book, just dust it off. Seventy years ago, Eric Hoffer wrote an iconic book, The True Believer. And I even mentioned him in my first Liberty and Tyranny. On the nature of mass movements, Hoffer explained that mass movements are built of deeply flawed individuals with deeply flawed ideas. He noted that, quote, a mass movement attracts and holds a following not because it can satisfy the desire for self-advancement, but because it can satisfy the passion for self-renunciation. People who see their lives as irredeemably spoiled cannot find a worthwhile purpose in self-advancement. They look on self-interest as something tainted and evil, something unclean and unlucky. Anything undertaken under the auspices of the self seems to them foredoomed. Nothing that has its roots and reasons in the self can be good and noble. Moreover, most mass movements, I write, are angry and gloomy movements hostile toward well-adjusted, happy, and successful individuals, among others. Indeed, I write later, there is a kind of psychotic pleasure and excitement in wrecking the present-day society, including, if not especially, one as free, humane, tolerant, and virtuous as ours. Hopper, let’s see, what surprises one when listening to the frustrated as they decry the present and all it works, writes Hopper, is the enormous joy they derive from doing so. Such delight cannot come from the mere venting of a grievance. By expatiating upon the incurable baseness and vileness of the times, the frustrated soften their feeling of failure and isolation. Thus, by deprecating the present, they acquire a vague sense of equality. The cause itself becomes the reason for one’s existence, as Hopper pointed out. The means a mass movement uses to make the present unpalpable strike a responsive chord in the frustrated. The self-mastery needed in overcoming their appetites gives them an illusion of strength. They feel that in the mastering themselves they have mastered the world. One gains the impression that the frustrated derive as much satisfaction, if not more, from the means a mass movement uses as from the end it advocates. My God, is that true! Thus Hopper is describing a fanatic in fanaticism. He says the fanatic’s passionate attachment is the essence of his blind devotion and religiosity, and he sees in it the source of all virtue and strength. Though his single-minded dedication is a holding on for dear life, he easily sees himself as the supporter and defender of the holy cause to which he clings. These would be Fuentes and the Groypers, and the people who subscribe to Carlson and Bannon. These would be the Marxists, the Islamists, the people who vote for Mondami and his ilk. Hopper explains it this way, the fanatic cannot be weaned away from his cause by an appeal to his reason or moral sense. Let me repeat that. The fanatic cannot be weaned away from his cause by an appeal to his reason or moral sense. Again, this is in Chapter 2 in American Marxism. He fears compromise and cannot be persuaded to qualify the certitude and righteousness of his holy cause. His passionate attachment is more vital than the quality of the cause to which he is attached. He continues to live without an ardent dedication is to be adrift and abandoned. He sees intolerance a sign of weakness, frivolity, and ignorance. He hungers for the deep assurance which comes with total surrender, with a wholehearted clinging to a creed and a cause. Sorry, I have to read with a magnifying glass. What matters is not the content, hold on, is not the contents of the cause, but the total dedication and communion with the congregation. The fanatic comes from all walks of life and all backgrounds. You can look at George Soros. You can look at others.

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