Jose Zepeda: In your books 'To Fight Against This Age' and 'Nobility of Spirit' you talk a lot about the masses. Do you think there are less and less citizens and more and more groups?
Rob Riemen: It's a fact. I hope that many people still know the work of Ortega y Gasset The Revolt of the Masses (1929). But approximately thirty years earlier, it was a French psychologist, Gustave Le Bon, who first wrote about the masses, the collective identity. Here is what happened. In European history, the French revolution takes place, which is a decisive moment in history, because the people rebel. They do not accept the absolutism of a monarch. It is over. The French Revolution begins with the promise of Liberty, Equality and Fraternity. But that promise is not fulfilled. Very soon, the French revolution ends in a bloodbath, in terror (1793-1794). Then the old powers return, although real absolutism is no longer possible. The people have taken their place.
This is when - Rousseau plays a central role in this process - the absolutism of the monarch is replaced by the absolutism of the people, that of popular sovereignty. It is when the nation, the people, is born, that it becomes history, through a language and a certain cultural tradition. But there are groups of people that become universal. And from there, step by step, nationalism is born. I repeat, this means that people no longer owe their identity to 'knowing themselves' but to the fact that they are French, German, Bavarian, Dutch or whatever. That's when the thinking stops. It is only a collective identity that seeks a leader. Le Bon points out that these leaders are often men of action, strong men. He says they are beings who border, in a way, on madness.
