Spanish thinker José Ortega y Gassett wrote a lot about “mass man.” In Rebelión de las Masas, he said:
“The mass crushes beneath it everything that is different, that is excellent, individual, qualified, and select. Anybody who is not like everybody, who does not think like everybody, runs the risk of being eliminated. And it is clear that this “everybody” is not “everybody.” “Everybody” was normally the complex unity of the mass and the divergent, specialized elite groups. Nowadays, “everybody” is the mass alone.”
But his most compelling and most important message is that when political, economic and social elites shirk the responsibilities they have as elites — that is, when elites behave like masses — that’s when society unravels. When elites put themselves above all others, above law, above the values (including religious values) they want everyone else to live by, the damage is progressive and extremely difficult to reverse.