The Factory of Contempt. Masses and Social-political Movements in the Digital Age

Abstract

This article investigates how, in the digital age, fear, hatred, and self-deception are transformed into mass contempt for facts, critical judgment, and truth. Drawing on thinkers such as Augustine, Kant, Nietzsche, Freud, Ortega y Gasset, Sloterdijk, Arendt, and the Frankfurt School, the analysis establishes a linkage between personal alienation, the crisis of institutions, and the mechanisms of contemporary political manipulation.

Globalization and consumer capitalism have dissolved certainties and stable structures, generating distrust and perceptions of dispossession. Modern bureaucracies, under the discourse of a “sacred union,” foster exclusion and the persecution of minorities. Contemporary liberalism, stripped of its ethical dimension, reduces the individual to market value and legitimizes extreme individualism.

Neo-totalitarian movements instrumentalize ideals such as homeland, family, or freedom to unite masses around a “false projection” that attributes imagined guilt and threats to vulnerable groups. This mechanism, amplified by social media and post-truth discourse, simplifies complexity into good-versus-evil narratives and manufactures scapegoats.

Arendt emphasizes that resisting totalitarianism requires replacing the notion of “obedience” with that of “support” or “consent,” making individual responsibility visible. Populism channels the resentment of impoverished sectors not to address the structural causes of their discontent but to redirect it toward symbolic targets that perpetuate alienation.

The article concludes that only a critical citizenry—aware of facts and capable of exercising independent judgment—can counter this “factory of contempt.” Restoring the bond between ethics and politics, dismantling discursive manipulation, and recognizing the intrinsic dignity of people are essential conditions for breaking the cycle of hatred that sustains both old and new forms of authoritarianism.