The theme of community––both false and true––runs through the readings for today. Totalitarianism relies on “the masses” remaining in their classless, nebulous positions, therefore fabricating a sense of communal understanding and interest. However, a community that comes to fruition by means of force or compulsion pales in comparison to true, human community.
On page 475 of Witness, Chambers writes about an exchange he had with a dear family friend of his, Paul Morelock. Morelock says to Chambers, “‘I don’t know anything about Communism,’ (…) ‘I’d rather be dead than be a Communist. But what I say is this: when a man is down, that’s when he needs friends to stand by him'” (Chambers 475-476). Although Morelock was suspicious of the Communist activities with which Chambers had been engaged, he recognized in his friend an innately human desire, and need, to be embraced in understanding.
Conversely, in The Origins of Totalitarianism, Arendt writes, “It soon became apparent that highly cultured people were particularly attracted to mass movements and that, generally, highly differentiated individualism and sophistication did not prevent, indeed sometimes encouraged, the self-abandonment into the mass for which mass movements provided” (Arendt 316). Totalitarianism seems to encourage a turning away from the inner world of oneself towards the rest of the mass. The lack of recognition of the individual allows the totalitarian leader to direct the mass in this way or that, thereby further erasing the bounds where one person begins and the next person ends.
In totalitarian regimes, once one turns away from the masses, one is an enemy of the totalitarian state. Chambers describes this sensation as an “almost physical antipathy to being stared at publicly” (474). This bit reminded me of something that Arendt wrote, “the chief characteristic of the mass man is not brutality and backwardness, but his isolation and lack of normal relationships” (317). It seems as though a crucial feature of someone who is able, and willing, to disappear into the mass is the inability to thrive in a community.