HCJ - The intellectuals and The masses

The intellectuals and the masses.

John Carey clearly has a dislike for people who follow the masses, however one of the people he writes about Arnold Bennett, says that even the masses who follow people are all individuals in their own way even if they are following people. He thinks that if people write books that appeal to the masses this should be seen a good thing and the masses that read them should not be looked down on.

Talks about the anti-feminist movement in modernism and how women allow themselves to be subjected to a lower social class to men.

Carey agrees with Hitlers view on a weak human race. Hitlers idea of a weak race was eastern Europeans, Jews, blacks homosexuals etc. any one not of aryan race. He even considered Russians as 'sub-humans' ( a tactic mainly used to stir up anti russki feelings during the campaign against Russia.)

''The remedies of the twenty-first century...will entail the recognition that, given the state of the planet, humans, or some humans, must now be categorised as vermin."

This is an almost fascist outlook, to categorise any humans as vermin is a prejudice view discriminating against them for whatever reason similar to one Mr Hitler.

Thought that Hitlers 'Mein Kampf' was not an evil look at society, but what all of western philosophy thinking is like.

Carey says that intellectual people are scared by the threat of the masses and there capability to overhaul the hierarchy. Carey says that the emergence of people being taught to read and learn for themselves scared the modernist intellectuals that had used literature and art exclusively to exclude the masses. He uses Nietzsche as an example of this who thinks the masses will always be lower in society.

Carey views the intellectuals in the same way as Hitler, he sees them as superior and that the masses should essentially be exterminated. The weak were seen as an inferior and they cannot contribute to society and are therefore useless.

Overall he believes that the masses should be controlled and cannot understand intellectual thinking and that if they are given the right to express their views and opinions they will overhaul the intelligentsia. This is similar to Hitlers views, believing that the masses are a threat.