Being essentially of
republican sympathies, and sympathizing with the exploited underclasses of Western Civilization, Ortega readily
recognized the positive implications of this mass phenomenon for the people in general. At the same time,
however, he feared that this ascendance of the uncouth, boorish, and unwashed masses might lead to civilization's
relapse into a new form of barbarism. He was convinced of the "essential inequality of human beings," and
consequently he believed in the unique role of the "intellectual elites" in the shaping of history.2
As a disciple of the Geistesgeschichte view of human evolution, Ortega was convinced of the primacy of
spiritual and intellectual factors over economic and material forces in historical evolution. Given these
convictions, he feared that the emergence of a mass society—dominated, as it was, by economic and
material considerations—would result in the reemergence of barbarism on a mass scale.
That Ortega's fears were partially justified can hardly be doubted in light of the mass exterminations
witnessed by several twentieth-century generations of human beings. As we all know, in the second quarter
of the past century six million Jews and many thousands of non-Jewish people were exterminated at the
orders of a lowly corporal turned into the unquestioned leader of Germany (Hitler). At the same time, forty
to fifty million innocent human beings fell victim to the twisted mind of a Caucasian brigand turned into the
"infallible leader" of the homeland of socialism (Stalin). Moreover, since the end of World War II, the world
has also stood witness to mass killings, expulsions, and genocides in such widely scattered regions of the
world as Cambodia in Southeast Asia, Rwanda in Central Africa, and in Bosnia in former Yugoslavia.
In looking at these terror actions against an ethnic group, religious denomination, or nationality—be
these mass expulsions, partial exterminations, or genocides—we are often confused how to categorize them.
Scholars and publicists are particularly confounded at the distinctions or alleged distinctions between
"genocide" and "ethnic cleansing." The first of these terms came into common use in conjunction with the
Jewish Holocaust of the World War II period, while the second term gained currency in the inter-ethnic
struggles of Bosnia during the early 1990s.