#masses

Nothing perhaps distinguishes modern masses as radically from those of previous centuries as the loss of faith in a Last Judgment: the worst have lost their fear and the best have lost their hope. Unable as yet to live without fear and hope, these masses are attracted by every effort which seems to promise a man-made fabrication of the paradise they longed for and of the hell they had feared. Just as the popularized feature of Marx's classless society have a queer resemblance to the Messianic Age, so the reality of the concentration camps resembles nothing so much as mediaeval pictures of hell. -- Arendt, Origins of Totalitarianism