- Person
- Hannah Arendt
- Lived
- 1906–1975
- Field
- Political Theory
- From
- German-American
The story
Hannah Arendt arrived in New York in 1941 with very little. A German Jewish refugee who had been jailed by the Gestapo and interned in France, she had seen the collapse of European democracy at first hand. Over the following decade, while working as a columnist, editor and researcher, she wrote a vast study of how the twentieth century had produced regimes that sought total domination over human beings.
The Origins of Totalitarianism, published in 1951, was structured as three essays: Antisemitism, Imperialism and Totalitarianism. It traced the rise of modern antisemitism through episodes such as the Dreyfus affair, examined how imperialism and scientific racism had eroded the limits of the nation-state, and showed how mass movements and the creation of millions of stateless people prepared the ground for terror. It examined the roots of both Nazism and Stalinism, arguing that totalitarianism was a new form of government that used terror against whole populations rather than only political opponents.
The book was among the first attempts to treat the Holocaust as a distinct catastrophe, appearing years before the major histories of the destruction of European Jewry. Its publication established Arendt's reputation as a thinker and writer. A German edition followed in 1955, and an enlarged edition in 1958 added a chapter on ideology and terror.
Arendt herself became an American citizen in 1951, ending nearly two decades of statelessness. She went on to teach at many universities and to write The Human Condition, On Revolution and Eichmann in Jerusalem.
The book has never lost its relevance. Its warning that the ideal subject of totalitarian rule is someone who can no longer tell fact from fiction, or true from false, has been widely quoted in debates about propaganda and disinformation, and in recent years the book has sold out as readers seek to understand how democracies come under threat and how hatred becomes state policy.
Why it matters
The Origins of Totalitarianism gave the world a framework for recognising and resisting totalitarian movements, and it remains essential reading on the dangers facing free societies.
About Hannah Arendt
Political theorist; "The Origins of Totalitarianism," "Eichmann in Jerusalem," and the phrase "the banality of evil."
More about Hannah Arendt
- Arendt was jailed by the Gestapo for exposing antisemitismIn 1933 Hannah Arendt secretly gathered evidence of Nazi antisemitism for the Zionist Federation of Germany. The Gestapo jailed her for eight days but could not read her coded notes.
- Arendt wrote the most widely read essay on refugeesHannah Arendt's chapter on the decline of the nation-state and the end of the rights of man, drawn from her own statelessness, has been called the most widely read essay on refugees ever.
- Hannah Arendt explained how ordinary people enable evilRefugee philosopher Hannah Arendt wrote The Origins of Totalitarianism in 1951 and later coined "the banality of evil", ideas still used to understand how ordinary people take part in atrocity.
- Arendt's Human Condition found hope in every new birthIn The Human Condition (1958), Hannah Arendt argued that natality, the capacity of each newborn person to begin something new, is the miracle that saves the world.
- Institutes in America and Germany carry Arendt's nameHannah Arendt's legacy lives on in Hannah Arendt Centers at Bard College and the New School, an institute for totalitarianism research in Dresden, and an annual prize for political thinking.
- Hannah Arendt helped Jewish children escape to PalestineIn Paris from 1935 to 1939, Hannah Arendt worked for Youth Aliyah, helping young Jews emigrate to Palestine, and became its special agent for rescuing refugee children.
Sources
- Hannah Arendt Wikipedia
- The Origins of Totalitarianism Wikipedia
Another act of tikkun olam. This is part of tikkun olam, the Jewish idea of repairing the world, and every one of us can add to it.