The true herdist [...] is nothing but an egoist who cannot tolerate anybody differing from himself. John Doe, the identitarian, wants a nation, a wor… - Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn

We witness in the eighteenth century the preparation of the French Revolution by individualism and the degeneration of the old "liberal" trends into economical liberalism of the deterministic Manchesterian pattern. Egalitarianism only appears in strongly collectivistic societies where strong exogenous powers try to shape persons into "individuals," deprived of their original character. The "individual" is merely the last indivisible unit of the "mass," and individualism the last, grotesque, and hopeless fight of depersonalized man within the ocean of collectivism to withstand the encroachment of the masses. Charles V had a personality but Gustave de Nerval, who promenaded a tamed lobster in the streets of Paris, was a mere individualist.

[T]here are in America about a hundred different types of "democracy," each held to be "real democracy, democracy as it was meant by the Founding Fathers, democracy as we all understand it." But the Founding Fathers, although they had very clear and concise ideas, wanted personally no democracy, and the only way out of the chaos is to go back like good children to the giants of the past, be they theologians like St. Thomas, philosophers like Plato, or statesmen like the authors of the Federalist. Confusion of words and meanings leads to the confusion of minds, and the confusion of minds breeds upheavals and revolution, as a well-known American once rightly pointed out.

The true "herdist" will carefully avoid acting or thinking originally, in order not to destroy the uniformity which is so dear to him, and he is also ready to rise immediately against anybody who dares to act independently and thus destroy the sacred unity of the uniform group to which he belongs. The loyal herdist will not rise alone against the sacrilegious offender; he will have the support of the rest of the circumscribed society and thus a mass action of collective protest will take place, forcing the "lonely individual" to conform or to withdraw. It must be fully borne in mind that no one of us is completely free from the influence of the herdist instinct and even the noblest among us yield to its dark appeal in one form or the other.