Hannah Arendt - The Origin of Totalitarianism

Arendt's first book, The Origins of Totalitarianism, was a response to the devastating events of
her own time - the rise of Nazi Germany and the catastrophic fate of European Jewry at its
hands, the rise of Soviet Stalinism and its annihilation of millions of peasants (not to mention
free-thinking intellectual, writers, artists, scientists and political activists).
This established her as an authority on the subject of that new form of terror-based
bureaucratically centralized violence made possible by twentieth-century technology in the
service of nineteenth-century ideology. It is considered as her most important contribution, as
well as the most controversial work.
Arendt wanted to give her readers a sense of the phenomenal reality of totalitarianism, of its
appearance in the world as a terrifying and completely new form of government.
The enormous complexity of The Origins of Totalitarianism arises from its interweaving of an
understanding of the concept of totalitarianism with the description of its emergence and
embodiment in Nazism and Stalinism.
Arendt insisted that these manifestations of political evil could not be understood as mere
extensions in scale or scope of already existing precedents, but rather that they represented a
completely 'novel form of government', one built upon terror and ideological fiction. Where
older tyrannies had used terror as an instrument for attaining or sustaining power, modern
totalitarian regimes exhibited little strategic rationality in their use of terror. Rather, terror was
no longer a means to a political end, but an end in itself. Its necessity was now justified by
recourse to supposed laws of history (such as the inevitable triumph of the classless society) or
nature (such as the inevitability of a war between "chosen" and other "degenerate" races).
Moreover, her theory on totalitarianism is centrally concerned with the nature and fate of the
modern state. The book presents a series of political pathologies – antisemitism, imperialism,
tribalism, and totalitarianism – that Arendt regards as the result of failures in the state’s dual
mission to integrate diverse social groups into a single body politic, and to uphold the uniform
rule of law for all.
Arendt also discusses the transformation of classes into masses, the role of propaganda in
dealing with the non-totalitarian world, and the use of terror, essential to this form
of government.
Difference between Previous Authoritarian states and 20th Century
Totalitarian Regimes
Totalitarian movements are fundamentally different from autocratic regimes, says Arendt,
insofar as autocratic regimes seek only to gain absolute political power and to outlaw
opposition, while totalitarian regimes seek to dominate every aspect of everyone's life as a
prelude to world domination. Arendt discusses the use of front organizations, fake
governmental agencies, and esoteric doctrines as a means of concealing the radical nature of
totalitarian aims from the non-totalitarian world.
The defining characteristic of totalitarianism, according to Arendt, is the use of terror as the
chief means of maintaining control. She explained that this is where such systems differ
completely from mere authoritarian despotisms or typical closed institutions such as the army.
All competing social and family ties must be destroyed, so "purges are conducted in such a way
as to threaten with the same fate the defendant and ... all his connections."
Terror within a totalitarian state or organization takes the form of dominating human beings
from within. It was with the intention of establishing control over the human mind. Not only
must one avoid expressing dissenting thoughts; merely possessing such thoughts is the ultimate
crime. The spouse who overhears one's sleeping murmurs will feel compelled to inform in order
to ensure personal safety -- or salvation, as the case may be.
Furthermore, even though Arendt does not view genocide as a condition of totalitarian rule,
but she does argue that the ‘totalitarian methods of domination’ are uniquely suited to
programmes of mass extermination. This way, unlike previous regimes of terror, totalitarianism
does not merely aim to eliminate physical life. Rather, ‘total terror’ is preceded by the abolition
of civil and political rights, exclusion from public life, confiscation of property and, finally, the
deportation and murder of entire extended families and their surrounding communities. In
other words, total terror aims to eliminate the total life-world of the species, leaving few
survivors either willing or able to relate their stories.
Arendt explained that in its early stages the totalitarian regime establishes a volunteer
espionage network and begins to ferret out those who have been known to oppose its
ascendancy. The second stage involves the definition of the "objective" or "necessary" enemy --
one who, according to the governing ideology, might be expected to oppose the regime. And
the identification of the "possible" crime -- what that person might have planned to do. After all
these are disposed of the terror becomes purely arbitrary. In the case of governments, the
concentration camp plays an indispensable role in the final stage.
Tribalism and Romantic Idealism
Hannah Arendt believed that the origin of totalitarianism in Europe can be traced to the long
history of tribalism and imperialism.
In fact, she had studied "autonomous self-transformation": a theme central to Romantic
Idealism and to the various forms of phenomenology and existentialism to which it had given
birth. She was all too aware, from her experience in German universities in the 1920s and early
1930s, of the continuing influence of Rousseau's Romanticism -- and of the growing popularity
of pan-Germanism. She knew that, far from being new in the world (or even unique to
Germany) Hitler's " propaganda spoke a language long familiar and never quite forgotten."

It had all started, she explained, in revolutionary and Napoleonic times, as a reaction to the
threatened disintegration of the nation state as a source of collective power for its members.
The shared sense of common occupancy of, and responsibility for, a national territory had been
gaining headway steadily since the time of Charlemagne.
As well, for many centuries the perception of membership in one human race had been
encouraged by the spread of universalizing philosophies. The Enlightenment, with its ideal of
empowerment of the individual through the use of reason and the senses -- accompanied by joint
participation in the civic society -- perhaps represented the pinnacle of this evolution away from
tribalism.
But, with the onset of the terrible insecurity of the early nineteenth century caused by changing
national borders and political liaisons, people turned for comfort and support to the family, and
to the clan or tribe. They began to revert once more to the older notion of blood ties and of
mystical tribal "oneness" as the criterion for separating groups from one another -- and as the
source of the only collective power that could now be relied upon to protect them. Values were
changing as well. Differences were sought and celebrated, rather than commonalities. Arendt
noted that "The Enlightenment's genuine tolerance and curiosity for everything human was
being replaced by a morbid lust for the exotic, abnormal and different as such."
Arendt identified two poisonous roots of the tribalism that culminated in twentieth century
totalitarianism: Romanticism and the race-thinking which took the form of pan-Germanic and
pan-Slavic movements. She noted that both roots were nourished in France as well as in
Germany. In fact, pan-Germanism as a political movement got its start with a group of alienated
French noblemen who claimed an inherited superiority to the masses because of direct
descendance from the Germanic conquerors of the Gallo-Roman populace in late Roman times.
In mid-nineteenth century the Comte de Gobineau, enthralled with Romanticism, welded the
two notions together into his historical doctrine of the "spiritual" superiority of the German
race. It was a doctrine that borrowed much from Hegel, Nietzsche and Romantic Idealism in
general, and contributed greatly to establishing the totalitarian regime under Hitler.
Criticism of Modernity
Arendt's negative appraisal of modernity was shaped by her experience of totalitarianism in the
twentieth century, and that her work provides a number of important insights that may help us
to address certain problematic features of the modern age.
In her political writings, and especially in The Origins of Totalitarianism, Arendt claimed that the
phenomenon of totalitarianism has broken the continuity of Occidental history, and has
rendered meaningless most of our moral and political categories. The break in our tradition has
become irrevocable after the tragic events of the twentieth century and the triumph of
totalitarian movements East and West. In the form of Stalinism and Nazism, totalitarianism has
exploded the established categories of political thought and the accepted standards of moral
judgment, and has thereby broken the continuity of our history.
For Arendt, therefore, the enormity and unprecedentedness of totalitarianism have not
destroyed, strictly speaking, our ability to judge; rather, they have destroyed our accepted
standards of judgment and our conventional categories of interpretation and assessment, be
they moral or political.