The Origins of Totalitarianism

Thwarting Totalitarianism Today After World War 2 and the rise of totalitarian government across Europe, people finally had the opportunity to contemplate exactly how a totalitarian government can come to be, and it was not until Hannah Arendt wrote The Origins of Totalitarianism that the public got a decent answer to how those governments can commit horrendous crimes against humanity. However, what the book does not do is outline how modern governments could help prevent a movement, like Nazism or the Bolshevik rule in Russia, from occurring again in their own country. Indeed, when contemplating utopian society, as Plato did in Republic or as Aristotle did in The Politics, one must consider not only the past failings of governments, but…

interest and some human end and all forms of government should ask the question ‘What is best for human flourishing and how do I achieve that?’ However, as Hannah Arendt showcases in her writings “The Origins of Totalitarianism” the rise of a new and separate form of government later named totalitarianism served no interest in human essence or human end but rather sought to destroy humanity. As Toni Morrison’s novel “Beloved” shows characteristics about slavery that match with the workings of a…

The Relationship between “Radical evil” and “The Banality of Evil” From “radical evil” to “the banality of evil”, the understanding from Arendt of totalitarianism and contemporary society does not transform ultimately, but it is going further constantly. If the key of the “radical evil” is to disclose the formation of the totalitarian system, the propaganda of the bureaucracy, the operation of the organization and the extreme society which makes people become banal, “the banality of evil” should…

Arendt writes, in Origins of Totalitarianism: “Totalitarianism in power uses the state administration for its long-range goal of world conquest…it establishes the secret police as the executors and guardians of its domestic experiment in constantly transforming reality into fiction.” The reality that totalitarianism destroys is it’s citizens understanding of how life functions, e.g. what is correct and incorrect behavior. Through the creation of their own rules, the secret police furthers the…

affairs in Between Past and Future (1961) Arendt argues that “The sharing of words and deeds did not last long, and they were thrown back into the ‘weightless irrelevance of their personal affairs, once more separated from ‘the world of reality’ by the ‘sad opaqueness’ of a private life centred about nothing but itself. And if they refused to go back to their very beginnings, to their most indigent behaviour ‘they could only return to the old empty strife of conflicting ideologies” (Arendt,…

Hannah Arendt wrote The Origins of Totalitarianism in 1949, by which time the world had been confronted with evidence of the Nazi system of terror and devastation. The disclosures of the evils were met with a high degree of doubtful investigation despite a considerable amount of evidence and a vast amount of records and photos. The capacity for comprehension was overwhelming and the nature and extent of these programs added to the unreal nature of the revelations. Arendt wrote about the…

. . . It is the only reliable ‘truth’ human beings can fall back upon” once totalitarianism destroys the space of civil society.8 “But,” she continues, “this ‘truth’ is empty or rather no truth at all, because it does not reveal anything...The book is not a transparent political statement. An attentive reading will show how 1984’s fictional political regime serves to render its surfaces opaque. From the historical experience of totalitarianism, Orwell has extracted the principle of the total…

If I were to make a prequel to 1984, I would want to see the story of Winston’s childhood, and the family that he slowly forgot. As Winston was in his late 30’s at the start of 1984 his time as an adolescent would have been a pivotal time in Big Brother’s rise. A story covering the origin of Big Brother while simultaneously telling the story of Winston’s childhood and the lives of his parents could show a different side to the story. In 1984, we see a man who is virtually alone in life,…

And yet, when Winston returns from the woods, his awakening does not effectively translate into action. The novel that opened with a man’s bold words of dissent, “DOWN WITH BIG BROTHER,” —closes with the same man’s declaration of love: “he loved Big Brother.” How does this radical transformation occur in Winston Smith—and moreover, what can it tell us about the power of language in totalitarian states? To answer these questions, let us turn, once again, to Hannah Arendt. In The Origins of…

For Arendt action is political and public. Politics is space and needs space, it is where the person describes the self, where discussion happens and where the possibilities of ‘natality’ (Arendt 1958) can be realised. People are helped in this process by institutions as a legitimising, durable and stabilising framework through which the initiative and accommodation of the plural person can happen. What is needed to hold the common together are places where people can be separate but at the…