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History. Politics. Nonfiction. HTML:Hannah Arendt's definitive work on totalitarianism�??an essential component of any study of twentieth-century political history.The Origins of Totalitarianism begins with the rise of anti-Semitism in central and western Europe in the 1800s and continues with an examination of European colonial imperialism from 1884 to the outbreak of World War I. Arendt explores the institutions and operations of totalitarian movements, focusing on the two genuine forms of totalitarian government in our time�??Nazi Germany and Stalinist Russia�??which she adroitly recognizes were two sides of the same coin, rather than opposing philosophies of Right and Left. From this vantage point, she discusses the evolution of classes into masses, the role of propaganda in dealing with the nontotalitarian world, the use of terror, and the nature of isolation and loneliness as preconditions for total do… (more)
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The second and third parts of Arendt's book are perhaps the most useful: they challenge many preconceptions that many people hold about fascism as a system. While many people, including myself, have tended to think of fascism as a state-centric phenomenon, Arendt convincingly argues that it did a great deal to destroy state institutions and modern concepts of statehood. She also takes pains to differentiate between authoritarian systems, in which power tends to flow downward from the top, with totalitarianism and fascism in particular, which are less organized, less self-interested, and generally more chaotic and anti-rational phenomena. This fits nicely with the ideas of historians who've expressed the view that Nazi Germany was a disorganized "polyocracy" rather than a well-regulated dictatorship. Arendt also takes aim at some of the modern periods most cherished ideas: she attacks the concept of "the Rights of Man" as absolutely unenforceable outside of a specifically national context, and her study of the trials of "displaced persons" in Europe after the First World War challenges the idea that nations are themselves naturally and necessarily cohesive entities. She also criticizes ideological thinking of all stripes as necessarily closed and of limited value, drawing, as she does, a useful comparison between Communist views of class warfare and Nazi notions of racial superiority as overarching all-embracing answers for everything.
The most chilling chapters of "The Origins of Totalitarianism" deal with the peculiar and terrible logic of totalitarian systems, in which the distinction between action and inaction and life and death tend to lose their meaning and the enlightenment-era concept of the unique self is hollowed out until people are seen as interchangeable units, or materiel. Finally, the distinctions she draws between men living together, living alone, feeling solitude, and feeling genuinely lonely are extremely affecting and make, in a roundabout way, a good case that these systems were essentially the product of the emotional displacements caused by the changes wrought by modernity. More than a historical analysis, "The Origins of Totalitarianism" also serves as a warning for those looking ahead in our own unstable times.
The author's main aim is to reveal the multifaceted irrationality and anti-rationality of totalitarian systems. She convincingly shows that utilitarian explanations of the "logic" behind totalitarianism are not valid. Totalitarianism aims only to destroy the civil rights of everyone, foreigners and compatriots alike. All other goals are secondary. The author's discussion of the key role that concentration camps play in this horrifying system is probably the best part of this book. The general conclusions she draws from Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia are pretty much applicable word for word to the one totalitarian state in the world today, North Korea. I therefore doubt that any other analysis of totalitarianism could equal this one.
Parts one and two, on the other hand, are a strange mixture of historical narrative, biography and arbitrary stream-of-thought without a distinguishale aim. Almost half of book one is spent on a biographical portrait of Benjamin Disraeli and on a discussion of the Dreyfus affair, neither of which yields any interesting conclusions about antisemitism. In book two the author is even further off the mark. Among other excursions she launches into a prolonged discussion of Hobbes' philosophy because he supposedly gives an "almost complete picture (...) of the bourgeois man" (p.134). I'm not sure what her intentions were when she wrote these parts, but they are both poorly structured and seem to have been written without much planning or editing.
In any case, my misgivings about parts one and two do not detract any value from the chapter on totalitarianism. Read part three and feel free to skip the two earlier parts in good conscience.
Highly recommended.
Hannah Arendt uses exceptionally long and convoluted sentences, which you must unravel slowly. It is only when you do this that you can make sense of what she writes.
She divided the book into three sections:
- The Jewish
sense to me. Having said that, I was extremely surprised to note that
anti-Semitism does not have deep historical roots! There is some very good
material on the changes that took place in Europe towards the end of the
19th century, possibly causing some of the disasters of the 20th century.
- Imperialism. There was some good material here, but she kept dancing between England and
Hitler. Because of this her narrative was not clear.
- Totalitarianism. This is when the book began to shine. There is so much material in this section
that this alone makes the book worthwhile. However, she obsessed about Stalin
and Hitler. I don't know why she did not compare these two men with other
totalitarian leaders. Nor did she explore the fine lines between totalitarianism,
tyranny and dictatorship.
Finally, the final
What should have been the books strongest chapters instead ramble as poorly organized lecture notes. Four times in the final section Arendt describes the SS as the 'transmission belt' of the Nazis. Perhaps it is a translation issue. 'Driving force' or to stick with the analogy, simply 'ratchet' would make more sense. It really stood out to this reader as a loosely organized set of notes after the 2nd repetition, let alone the fourth.