The Origins of Totalitarianism: Index to All Posts
This post will be updated with all posts on The Origins of Totalitarianism by Hannah Arendt. Here’s a copy of this book. All page numbers correspond to that version
Posts in this series:
The Origins of Totalitarianism Part 1: Introduction.
The Origins of Totalitarianism Part 2: Antisemitism
The Origins of Totalitarianism: Interlude on the Tea Party
The Origins of Totalitarianism Part 3: Superfluous Capital and Superfluous People
The Origins of Totalitarianism: Interlude on The Commons
Capitalism Versus The Social Commons (published at Naked Capitalism; discusses privatization using Rosa Luxemburg theory)
The Origins of Totalitarianism Part 4: Humanity under Totalitarianism
The Origins of Totalitarianism: Interlude on Right-Wing Authoritarianism
The Origins of Totalitarianism Part 5: Artistic and Intellectual Elites and the Rise of Fascism
The Origins of Totalitarianism: Interlude Defining Elites
The Origins of Totalitarianism: Interlude On the Twilight of Conservative Elite Pundits
The Origins of Totalitarianism Part 6: Totalitarian Propaganda
The Problem of the Liberal Elites Part 1
The Problem of Liberal Elites Part 2 On Trade
The Problem of the Liberal Elites Part 3 on Trade
The Problem of the Liberal Elites Part 4 Conclusion
“Totalitarian propagandists provided such stories premised on pseudo-scientific certainties about society,..”
Again, what Arendt says about fascism is interesting and, though dated, useful. But her attempt to generalise the analysis to embrace Communism simply doesn’t work. Love it or hate it Communism, as practised by the Soviet Union, just doesn’t fit into the same framework that contains Naziism. And the differences between the propaganda employed is very obvious: it is the difference between Stewart Chamberlain and Marx, between Capital and the Protocols of the Elders of Zion.
The Totalitarian thesis doesn’t work: as you make plain the similarities between one form of the collapse of liberalism into authoritarianism-fascism- and current politics are much more obvious. And chilling.
I tend to agree. For example, on the propaganda issue, there are obvious differences between that of the Nazis, which focused on secret societies and the role of the Jews, neither of which I perceive in the Communist propaganda. That’s why I’ve been focused on her discussion of the rise of Nazism.