POLI 107: Hannah Arendt: " Origins of Totalitarianism"

Effect of the Industrial Revolution (Arendt)

- curse is up rootedness and superfluousness. (loneliness) -To be uprooted means to have no place in the world, recognized and guaranteed by others; to be superfluous means not to belong to the world at all

Wherever totalitarianism asserted itself it:

-1. Developed entirely new political institutions and destroyed all social, legal, and political traditions of the country. -2. transformed classes into masses -3. Supplanted the party system, not by one-party dictatorships but by a mass movement. -4. Shifted the center of power from the army to the police -5. Established a foreign policy openly directed toward world domination.

Positive laws (Arendt)

-Simply as a human made law -typically come from legislative bodies and give stability to the public square -stabilizing factors

2 illusions of democratically ruled countries that totalitarianism ended (Arendt)

-That the people in its majority had taken an active part in government and that each individual was in sympathy with one's own or somebody else's party. -That these politically indifferent masses did not matter, that they were truly neutral and constituted no more than the inarticulate backward setting for the political life of the nation.

Totalitarian Lawfulness vs. Legality (Arendt)

-Totalitarian lawfulness is a higher law while [its opposite, according to Arendt] legality recognizes the discrepancy between justice and law. - Legality comprehends individual human behavior -Totalitarian lawfulness puts individual in service of its law

Terror (Arendt)

-eliminates individuals for the sake of the species, sacrifices the 'parts' for the sake of the whole. -it binds everyone together and eliminates all space between individuals

Isolation (Arendt)

-hallmark of tyrannical governments and exists through the collapse of the law. -By acting on the law it leaves space for people's movement in private relations. Totalitarianism destroys not only the public law, but private space as well.

Ideology (Arendt)

-logic of an idea. -historical, concerned with becoming and perishing, with the rise and fall of cultures

Loneliness (Arendt)

-not belonging in the world at all.

Second- Reality (Arendt)

-ruins all relation with reality - (i.e. living in Nazi Germany and being brainwashed)

Totalitarianism

-total terror - implement your ideology until everyone believes it

3 Specific Totalitarian Elements Specific to All Ideological Thinking (Arendt)

1) Total Explanation- ideologies have the tendency to explain not what is, but what becomes, what is born and passes away. 2) Sixth Sense- enables us to become aware of reality that is behind perceptible things. 3)Ideological thinking ORDERS FACTS into **an absolutely logical procedure which starts from an axiomatically accepted premise, deducing everything else from it**

Masses (Arendt)

The term masses applies only where we deal with people who either because of sheer numbers, or indifference, or a combination of both, cannot be integrated into any organization based on common interest, into political parties or municipal governments or professional organizations or trade unions... -characteristic of Nazi movement