With his usual lucidity, José Ortega y Gasset warned early on, in Revolt of the Masses, about the phenomenon of “fullness” that characterized the formation of modern society. Since the 1930s, the multitude—a previously episodic reality that formed around extraordinary events and then dissolved—became a permanent and fundamental fact. This is how the masses take over spaces, determine doctrines, impose behaviors. The masses were here to stay. They broke patterns, changed culture and disrupted social and political ways of being.

The masses – and now the tumult – prevail. Modern music indicates restlessness. There is no concert without frenetic people. The dominant sport is mass, it needs stages that gather thousands of people, it lives on the adrenaline of brave bars and the euphoria of individuals who dissolve their personality in the behavior of fans. “Culture” is measured by the people who gather and fill the stage. A good book is one that sells millions of copies, even if it is a poor quality novel.

In Europe, the peak of the masses generated socialism, fascism and national socialism, totalitarian political doctrines that worshiped the people, promoted collectivism and replaced the rationality of liberal systems with the charisma of leaders and the authoritarianism of the state. At the same time, a sui generis missionary sense pervaded politics. Speeches and doctrines were infected with quasi-religious concepts and rituals. Theses grafted into mass movements turned into dogmas, and their “enlightened” leaders thought they had the right to persecute “heretics”, silence dissidents, subjugate, suppress or abolish the opposition that the masses considered enemies, fanatics and irreconcilables.

In Latin America, the political peak of “puna” – the rule of the masses – generated, as a by-product, populism, which is the logic of leaders with intuition and the ability to manipulate to train, for their benefit, the masses mobilized in the heat of temporary revenge and historical revenge, fueled by clientelism and old unsatisfied needs.

The phenomenon of a full crowd, characteristic of a mass society, is accompanied by the “fact of disorder”, i.e. the presence of mobilized, aggressive and militant masses, who impose themselves, apply their rules, and praise their leaders to the extent that paroxysms and intimidation suppress all diversity and inaugurate new despotisms . The deformations of media democracy and populism have to do with crowds indoctrinated to satisfy slogans, eliminate dissent and destroy anything put in front of their noses.

Disorder organized to impose the mandates of the leader, that is, the party, makes democracy a cloak for new despotisms.

“Stormy democracy” and its ally, media manipulation of public opinion, are the background to the sacrifice of civil liberties. (OR)