Arendt is a very crucial thinker. Her cavalier approaches, according to my understanding resemble around a theoretical-psychological framework on one hand, and historical on the other. Contrary to Arendt’s views, totalitarianism is unique to the modern world. A new experience that stunned the world and left it puzzled. A phenomenon that made the world speechless, that is.
The modus operandi of dominating every aspect of the state and the individual--- to unleash violence, terror, and utter control to mobilize the masses as a submissive force to reach certain aims. The ability of totalitarianism to dictate the individuals’ thought and to mold it into a drive that abides the ideology is quite astonishing, and worrying. Is totalitarianism a decadence of our humanity? The fact that a being can possess such power is beyond justifiable. The indifferent artifacts are left to seek oblivion. Arendt pays insufficient attention to the psychology of the totalitarian leaders, and points out that they lack the belief of their own ideology as a mere function of their movement.
Totalitarianism, is it a new type of regime? Or has it always existed? According to some social scientists, totalitarianism has always existed in the past tyrannies, monarchies, etc. Tools of terrors have existed before, and perhaps totalitarianism is not completely new, but it certainly did reach its climax during the Second World War and its aftermath. According to Arendt, totalitarianism compounded from elements that led to the crystallization of a new phenomenon after the First World War, and therefore these elements provided the hidden essence of totalitarianism. In a nutshell, Arendt claims that the 19th century imperialism made totalitarianism possible.
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...talitarianism, and she stressed that terror is no longer used as a mean to frighten rivalries’ but as a medium to rule the masses of people who are perfectly obedient to the authority. Another element that makes totalitarian unprecedented is (2) ideology. Totalitarian leaders put forward a platform to mobilize the masses. Arendt emphasized on a metaphorical term, “iron of band”. A term in which total terror binds men together to one-gigantic dimension. It holds them so tightly that they lose their essence of plurality. Ideology plays a very crucial role in binding men together. A mechanism to drive the masses, to blind them, and to drive them into submission, a bundle of submission. According to Arendt, ideology charge the totalitarian movement with a framework set in motion. When ideologies are harnessed to a totalitarian movement, logic is not seen as a necessity
1. In her book “Total Domination”, Hannah Arendt strongly believed that Totalitarianism is trying to achieve the idea of Total domination. She studied and analyzed how totalitarianism had always falls into the idea of total domination in which she explained how total domination works in her point of view and her own description of Totalitarian. Her purpose is to show how the leaders treated humans lesser than animals in a way of how they torture people with their cruelty. She seems to have a great ideas of her comparison that gives justice to really make me believe that totalitarian has the same idea of total dominion.
According to the Merriam-Webster online dictionary, a Mass of people is a large body of persons in a group. In Chapter 10 of Hannah Arendt’s novel, The Origins of Totalitarianism, Arendt broadly defines the term masses, as well as the mass individual. Before doing this, Arendt clearly distinguishes masses from classes and citizens. As Arendt notes, classes and citizens are part of a nation-state, which essentially represent themselves. Arendt claims that Totalitarianism movements are mass organizations of atomized isolated individuals. In this claim, there are many key features that define Totalitarianism as a political system.
Totalitarianism can be defined in the Merriam-Webster dictionary as the centralized control by an autocratic authority. The leaders of these societies are obsessed with complete control and will take whatever steps are necessary to reach such a goal. In many totalitarian societies, children are separated from their families. This is enforced on the citizens because rulers want them to be loyal to the government. Such living arrangements can be portrayed in Ayn Rand’s novel, Anthem.
He institution (the authorities) keeps correct doctrines and teach them to people when they are young, and nonconformists are silenced. When the doctrines change, the individuals don’t recognize it because it happens very slowly. Peirce argues that “this is the main and the best method to govern the masses, and especially theological and political doctrines are uphold by this method (i.e. we have a totalitarian system). It leads to peace, although slowly, and in the cost of individual freedom. It is also incomplete method, because everything cannot be regulated, but only the main opinions, and there will always exist dissident
1984 was written as a warning to the western countries about having a totalitarianism government which is refers to a system of government in which lawfully electes representatives maintain the integrity of a nation state whose citizens, while granted the right to vote, have little to no participation in the decision-making process of the government. The author felt like these countries were not able to find tactics to withstand the communism that was being taken placed. When the book was written in 1949 the Cold War had not yet broke out, and most people supported the diplomacy with the democratic communism. The author found the cruelty that was committed in the communist countries very disturbing, and the technologies that were used to help these countries control the citizens intriguing. This book tells how a complete government controlled country could be. Warning those who lived during this time to that if they did not want this to happen then they better vote against totalitarianism.
Unlike individual refusals, political refusals like civil disobedience always involve claims of legitimacy. In her essay "Civil Disobedience," Hannah Arendt examines the legitimacy of civil disobedience, particularly that which occurs in the United States. Arendt says that "Voluntary associations are not parties; they are ad-hoc organizations that pursue short-term goals and disappear when the goal has been reached" (95). The voluntary organizations that she mentions are groups involved in civil disobedience. The short-term goals that the organizations have add legitimacy to their refusal, as they form only for a specific purpose and dissolve after the purpose has been reached. In his "Letter from Birmingham
The famed political author George Orwell once said “I write […] because there is some lie that I want to expose, some fact to which I want to draw attention . . .” (Orwell 3). This philosophy is at the heart of his novel Nineteen Eighty-Four in which he strives to reveal the dangers of communism through the extreme totalitarian world of Nineteen Eighty-Four. The principal danger which Orwell presents is that “communism [is] not a revolutionary force, but instead [is] a new, dangerous form of totalitarianism” (Rossi 207) in which the government is stifling society to gain control and power at the cost of its citizen’s freedom, and humanity. There are
First, I will look at Arendt’s criticism of violence. She believes that violence is not an idle concept. It needs to be justified by ethics and philosophy and often cannot be referred to without regard to
According to Hannah Arendt, “The Declaration of the Rights of Man at the end of the eighteenth century was a turning point in history”. (Arendt, 290). She begins her thesis by making this affirmation. However, throughout her essay, she further develops the idea that this “Declaration of the Rights of Man” has been questioned ever since then, because of the fact that these human rights don’t really appear to be implemented over a numerous amount of human beings. This “turning point” which Arendt refers to, indicates that when human rights were first conceived, they stated that only the nation worked as the law, and neither the divine law nor anything else had power over them. This was the moment when control over these rights was lost, since there is a deficiency in the precision of who really has the rule of law over them, if not even the human authorities have been able to manage the “universality” they are supposed to express. Hannah Arendt’s explanation on the human rights article called “The
One of the defining principles of democratic society is the idea that “majority rules.” Despite the fundamental nature of this principle, it has been challenged by some of the greatest thinkers in history. Henry David Thoreau, Emmeline Pankhurst and Karl Marx are among these great thinkers who have commented on the role of the majority in different political and social situations. In works such as, “Civil Disobedience,” “Why We Are Militant,” and the “Communist Manifesto,” they point out some of the inherent flaws with the “majority rules” maxim.
It was during the 1920’s to the 1940’s that totalitarian control over the state escalated into full dictatorships, with the wills of the people being manipulated into a set of beliefs that would promote the fascist state and “doctrines”.
Howe, Irving, and George Orwell. 1984 Revisited Totalitarianism in Our Century. New York: Harper & Row, 1983.
The Nazi government achieved there power through fear from the terror of the SS and Gestapo, and the feared Police State is a characteristic of totalitarian States.
‘On violence’ was an essay written by German-American Hannah Arendt (14 October 1906 – 4 December 1975). Arendt was a political philosopher, prolific in the 1960’s, she mainly covered topics revolving around totalitarianism, patriarchy and politics. The essay ‘on violence’ explored views of violence, strength, authority, power and force. Through the essay, she aimed to clarify and distinguish the afore-mentioned points, and create an understanding of them. She aimed to break down the theory in philosophical and academic terms; something she strongly felt was not adequately done at the time. (Arendt, 1972)
...difficult to overcome the ruling class, as this violence is not obvious, as it is structured in the things we do in everyday life, making it virtually impossible to overcome this deep, structural violence within society. Arendt argues that political institutions and poor governance and justifications for warfare lead to violence being inflicted on the community, with the modern concept of ‘totalitarianism’ allowing for the concept of freedom to be linked to justification of war, something that deeply disturbs her. Overall, Arendt greatly challenges her principles in On Revolution to determine that violence and politics will always be linked, however forecasts that her theory of revolution can impact the future of politics internationally and create a free society, providing hope that one day politics and violence will be distinct, allowing for genuine governance.