One thing is radicals, especially artists and writers. And the other, explains Robert Nisbet, is organizations of people:
The destruction of the independent labor unions in Nazi Germany was followed by the prohibition of independent economic organizations of every kind. It was not the fact of labor that was central; it was the social fact of union. All autonomous organizations were destroyed and made illegal: professions, service clubs, voluntary mutual aid groups, fraternal associations, even philatelist and musical societies. Such organizations were regarded, and correctly, by the totalitarian government as potential sources of future resistance, if only because in them people were brought together for purposes, however innocent, that did not reflect those of the central government. As organizations they interposed themselves between the people as a society and the people as the masses.
(Quoted from page 202 of The Quest for Community, by Robert Nisbet. Oxford University Press, 1953.)
For a brief biography of Robert A. Nisbet, click here. For images of or relating to Robert A. Nisbet, click here.
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