Hannah Arendt (1906–1975)

Summary: A work tracing the rise of totalitarian governments in the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany to their origins in racism and class warfare, reactions to imperialism, and the mechanics that distinguish totalitarian states from other kinds of states.

The Origins of Totalitarianism is on my "Ten Books I Want to Read Before I Die" list. After over a month of reading, I can check this book off the list, but I can't dismiss it from my thoughts. It is long, the prose is demanding, and the ideas show more are critically important to our times. I certainly will not do the book justice in a blog-length review. But I hope I can give you a sense of what it is about and why I think the book is worth the effort.

The book is written in three parts. Many focus on the third, "Totalitarianism" and neglect the first two, on "Antisemitism" and Imperialism." The first part describe the rise of race thinking, particularly in the context of the nation-state, and how the Jews, as stateless persons were particularly vulnerable to racist attacks. This was epitomized in the Dreyfus Affair, in which a French Army officer, Alfred Dreyfus, of Jewish descent, was wrongly accused of treason and convicted, arousing latent fears about Jews in France, indeed fears about the motives of Jews in other European countries.

Imperialism arose, in Arendt's analysis as economic expansion came up against national limits. Arendt writes:

“Imperialism was born when the ruling class in capitalist production came up against national limitations to its economic expansion. The bourgeoisie turned to politics out of economic necessity; for if it did not want to give up the capitalist system whose inherent law is constant economic growth, it had to impose this law upon its home governments and to proclaim expansion to be an ultimate political goal of foreign policy.”

In turn, a form of continental imperialism arose, as an alternative to the existing parties characterized as "pan-Slav" or "pan-German." This played into ideologies that led to decline of the parliamentary nation states, institutionalizing either anti-Semitism, or anti-bourgeois sentiment (even after the bourgeoisie in Russia was eliminated).

The third part describes the methodology of totalitarian movements eventuating in totalitarian states. Such movements substitute masses for classes, kept in subjection by an inner ring of secret police using methods of terror to keep people in line, using camps and gulags to destroy real and projected enemies. Propaganda plays a critical role in creating an alternate reality that followers of the totalitarian leader prefer to truth, particularly in engendering fear of an "other" who threatens the state. Arendt writes,

“The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the convinced Communist, but people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction (i.e., the reality of experience) and the distinction between true and false (i.e., the standards of thought) no longer exist.”

Arendt's book concludes, in its revised edition, with a chapter discussing how loneliness and isolation of individuals serve as pre-conditions for totalitarianism.

The one thing I missed in her analysis was a discussion of how the disruption of World War I and global economic depression contributed to the conditions giving rise to Stalinism and Nazism. It seems to me that these conditions offered fertile ground for the use of racist and classist attacks, widespread dissatisfaction with the existing nation-state (which she does touch on), and the appeal of a strong leader.

This book has gone through a resurgence of interest in light of current political developments in the US. The language of tyranny and totalitarianism has been thrown around, but in reality we are a long way from Arendt's description of governments that dominate every aspect of a person's life through government-sponsored terror, secret police, and concentration camps (apart from the temporary interning of undocumented refugees and their children).

Nevertheless, there are concerning trends that Arendt observes in these totalitarian societies that are present in American society:

--Nationalist organizations affirming one's racial identity while portraying other "races" as a threat to the nation's greatness.

--Deep dissatisfaction with established political parties and systems.

--The blurring of distinctions between fact and fiction, of truth and falsehood to uphold particular narratives of reality and the questioning of motives of any who challenge those narratives.

--The increasing isolation and loneliness of growing numbers of people, confined to echo chambers of virtual communities, instead of being surrounded by robust local communities.

--A growing focus on national political leadership, and particularly on finding strong figures who "get things done" as the critical element to a thriving national life, as opposed to local forms of government, voluntary associations, and private enterprise.

None of these of themselves eventuate in the totalitarian state of which Arendt writes. But these conditions could be exploited by leaders unafraid of using methods of totalitarian control to transform a democratic republic to a government that dominates every aspect of the human existence of its citizens.

I suspect the people of Czarist Russia and of early 1930's Germany believed that a totalitarian state "couldn't happen here." Perhaps that assumption is the most dangerous of all. Arendt's massive work traces how it did, and could. It persuaded me that it can happen here, and of the vital work each of us need to embrace in bridging rather than accentuating our divides, in protecting the institutions that help us separate fact from fiction, in renewing our neighborhoods and local communities, and in exercising deliberate care in those we elect to positions of power and trust. show less

By the title, I might have gotten the impression that this might have been a full history and treatise on all Totalitarian regimes, but I'm not at all unhappy to see how the author narrowed it down to the full wealth of circumstances that gave rise to Nazi Germany and, to a lesser degree, Stalin's Russia.

More than that, Hannah Arendt proves to be an erudite master at breaking down huge subjects and many causes into easily digestible chunks.

The focus begins on the actual origins of racial show more targeting and the somewhat interesting disconnect between real grievances and a targeted terror movement starting early with the Rothschild banking, 19th century propaganda, and political climates including the Dreyfus account. (Very interesting stuff here.)

It leads, naturally enough, into MORE of the same charges and racially-charged Us/Them mentalities and exactly how the machinations of a few could inculcate a whole nation. The trick is to slowly, surely, make everyone guilty of the same kind of injustice, formalize it and redirect all culpability toward the Leader and wash your hands of the reality, and then hold on for dear life as everyone else you know is forced into looking over their shoulders to see if they might be next on the chopping block.

It's perfectly understandable. Totalitarianism is the utter eradication of self and self-destiny under the auspices of a single, irrepressible force. It runs on fear and distrust. Everyone under Hitler was in an untenable position and knew they could lose favor at any time.

Stalin worked the same way. The results were almost always similar as a whole. Many people died, and no one knew how to go on except by hanging on to the system that brought them there.

Ideology didn't really matter. Terror was the driving force, carried along by a fierce logical insistence that they were always right. Not even dissent mattered. The logical progression, taken to its extremes, was always used as the ultimate rationality.

This book showed us a wealth of information in every step. Starting out with imperialism and ending with totalitarianism, this book also gives us some other very important insights.

Believe it or not, they're insights that apply as equal now as they did then, and not as a pithy or ironic commentary on this or that politician we hate.

Mostly, it starts out as finding an Other to hate. It could just be any Us versus Them. Dehumanize them. Blame all your problems on them. And then make your supporters do something horrible. Turn your whole nation into people who are already guilty. Make sure they remain confused and uncertain. And then turn up the heat, making them all do worse things, progressively, until they see no way out but forward. Give them no other choice.

Easy blueprint.

Who is next? Women versus men? Another Race s**tstorm? Blue Vs Red? Rich versus the poor?

Quite sobering to see how we're pushing ourselves closer and closer to Totalitarianism all the time. All we need is one single Leader who can blackmail us all into doing his bidding, and here we go! show less

Now this was a very interesting read. I expected this to be book about nature of violence but it is actually book that looks at rise of violence in 1960's during the student riots that shook the Western world and also had an occurrence in the East at the time but (as expected) with lesser effect than in the West.

Author makes a very good distinction between power and violence and what links them. Power as a means of controlling the society through majority of populace and violence that gets show more used when power is not possible in order to subdue the populace by minority [of populace]. Once power that-is gets challenged and it does not have proper answer to critique it starts to lose its authority and this is something every politician is scared sh**less off. This is why it is important to ridicule every idiotic decision government makes - laughter is sometimes more powerful weapon than actual weapon.

It is important to remember that knife-drawing never happens at the beginning but at the end and one needs to make sure that final moment never takes place.

With this in mind we are given rather disturbing picture of the 60's from where all the couch revolutionaries come from. I say couch revolutionaries because all these fiery philosophers are very akin to stock market analysts of our days - they will spit on the very society that gives them means to live (majority are professors) and they will talk whatever they think is the ultimate truth while constantly avoiding the fact that their speeches will incite the masses that are trying to find the way to communicate with the powers-to-be to change things for a better. And when finally proverbial sh*t hits the fan they will just stand aside and say "who, me? nooooo I was misunderstood". I find it very disturbing that people that live off the spoken word so blatantly disregard the power of the same spoken word.

So in 60's Left (same one as today) became more and more violent (same as today), led by philosophers arguing that violent action is required to force the change. This was a shift because so far at that moment call to violence was coming usually from the Right while Left was usually concentrated on peaceful (or as peaceful as possible, or even short-lived violent approach) action. So turning to the violent ways was unexpected for the Left but that is what happened for the first time in 60's.

So what was the goal? Roots for rise of violence in Left can be found in what author calls loss of trust in the institutions and growing disaffection of people with the way states were ran and frustration because there seems to be no way of initiating the change through normal means. Governments and other state institutions got heavily bureaucratized in such a way that ordinary people get frustrated because they dont have anyone to contact to talk about their problems. Entire government basically became one after another commission that has no responsibility for anything, everything feels like a quick sand. But even in that case current governments are elected through democratic process so what is alternative? I agree with author that change needs to be done on existing system because pursuing some utopian dream will only bring tyranny through forced change - simply for a reason that such change brings vacuum that gets quickly populated by very aggressive and power hungry people (usually very unscrupulous) that can not be removed from power that easily (just look at Soviet Revolution or last year when it became obvious how unwilling are politicians to denounce their powers once they attain them). Chaos is never good starting point.

Author gives a very disturbing observations on how people during the riotous 60's started to raise important questions that were constantly addressed in a very sloppy way that laid the foundation for future discord (especially in case of racial questions). She shows how universities started to decay through introduction of ever more useless classes that become nothing more but verbal exercise of the futile kind. In the 1960's universities were tightly coupled to industrial and military endeavors and it was rightly so that students and academics wanted this to stop, but what was the result? Research (and people) from universities moved to private sectors thus leaving universities to develop more and more unproductive studies. I especially liked author's observations on rise of various studies about violence from almost everyone - from zoologists to political theoreticians that are nothing more than reiterations of already known facts.

Author also gives a very chilling (considering this was written in 1970) view of influence of science and technology - people from scientific fields (physical science, not metaphysical one) did not have much impact in the 60's but given time they would gain more and more (and that happened) until finally we dont end up in technocratic tyranny (where it seems we are going to, I hope this does not happen). And that will be tyranny no matter the prefix.

I like how author constantly brings forth the fact that humans are humans, we react to certain things in a certain way and as long despair and feeling of futility and frustration rises in populace (and current situation for me does not look much different than 60's) levels of violence will also rise. Government needs to find the way to connect back to the very people that gave them power and hopefully they will do it in a productive way like De Gaulle did in 60's that actually brought some change.

Very interesting read, sometimes dense (German passage were tough) but with good insight into working of government-politics-populace. Author does not seem to be pure theoretician but someone who has hands-on experience with how political activities can deviate in a matter of seconds.

Recommended. show less

I just ranted about my discomfort with Arendt in my review of her Eichmann in Jerusalem, and won't repeat it here.* This collection of interviews is a nice, clear read. I don't know if there's enough meat for it to act as a good introduction, but there are very nice moments in all the interviews here.

"When the person who hasn't done anything, who has only seen and gone away, says, 'we're all guilty,' he thereby is covering up for the man who actually carried it through--this is what show more happened in Germany. And so we must not generalize this guilt, since that is only covering up for the guilty." [A good point; I'm very convinced that we're all guilty, and this is a good reminder that my position can 'cover up' the differences between those who are really guilty, e.g., the police officer who shot Michael Brown, and those who are less guilty, e.g., other white people. On the other hand, there are degrees and kinds of guilt, and one can be guilty of something (benefiting from police violence) without being guilty of the means required to provide that benefit (actual police violence)].

She quotes Socrates: "It is better to be in disunity with the whole world than with oneself, since I am a unity." [This is all well and good when you are a German living in Nazi Germany and the world you are disunified from is morally repulsive. But what about our contemporaries, who could use precisely this reasoning to avoid paying taxes? Arendt's hyper-individualism is never softened by an understanding of humans as social animals; that makes sense as a stance against totalitarianism, but seems very dangerous when elevated to the position of self-standing philosophical truth.]

At other moments she's more nuanced:

"Whether anti-Bolshevists announce that the East is the Devil, or Bolshevists maintain that America is the Devil, as far as their habits of thought go it amounts to the same thing. The mentality is still the same. It sees only black and white. In reality there is no such thing. If one does not know the whole spectrum of political colors of an epoch, cannot distinguish between the basic conditions of the different countries, the various stages of development, traditions, kinds and grades in production, technology, mentality and so on, then one simply does not know how to move and take one's bearings in this field. One can do nothing but smash the world to bits in order to finally to have before one's eyes one thing: plain black."

And sometimes she just makes me feel warm and fuzzy:

"To think always means to think critically. And to think critically is always to be hostile. Every thought actually undermines whatever there is of rigid rules, general convictions etc. Everything which happens in thinking is subject to a critical examination of whatever there is... thinking itself is such a dangerous enterprise... nonthinking is even more dangerous."

And she quotes Brecht, which sometimes backfires, but I enjoyed:

"One may state that tragedy deals with the sufferings of mankind in a less serious way than comedy."

Absolutely.




* https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/1128656061?book_show_action=false show less