Na aldeia de Montaillou, durante as perseguições medievais, os inquisidores pediram que uma mulher dissesse de quem tinha tirado suas dúvidas heréticas sobre inferno e ressureição. Ela deveria saber que corria o terrível perigo de uma morte lenta nas mãos dos devotos, mas respondeu que não as tinha tirado de ninguém, e sim chegado a elas por conta própria. (Você frequentemente ouve os crentes louvarem a simplicidade de seu rebanho, mas não no caso dessas espontâneas e conscientes sanidade e lucidez, cujos autores foram reprimidos e queimados em número maior do que somos capazes de imaginar.
One leader, one people, signifies one master and millions of slaves. The political intermediaries who are, in all societies, the guarantors of freedom, disappear to make way for a booted and spurred Jehovah who rules over the silent masses or, which comes to the same thing, over masses who shout slogans at the top of their lungs. There is no organ of conciliation or mediation interposed between the leader and the people, nothing in fact but the apparatus—in other words, the party—which is the emanation of the leader and the tool of his will to oppress. In this way the first and sole principle of this degraded form of mysticism is born, the Fuhr-erprinzip, which restores idolatry and a debased deity to the world of nihilism. Mussolini, the Latin lawyer, contented himself with reasons of State, which he transformed, with a great deal of rhetoric, into the absolute. "Nothing beyond the State, above the State, against the State. Everything to the State, for the State, in the State....