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LG

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LG is Currently Reading

LG is currently reading

The Origins of Totalitarianism

by Hannah Arendt

bookshelves: central-eastern-europe, germany, russia, currently-reading

Reading for the 2nd time

read in March 2022

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LG said: " Something about Hannah Arendt's writing intimidated me, and I have not truly tackled her until recently. As I read, I selected quotes that really resonated given recent events. I see her thinking in other authors that I've been reading. After some ti Something about Hannah Arendt's writing intimidated me, and I have not truly tackled her until recently. As I read, I selected quotes that really resonated given recent events. I see her thinking in other authors that I've been reading. After some time, I would like to re-read passages in a deliberate manner along with a discussion with others. Community is needed.

When, in the era of imperialism, businessmen became politicians and were acclaimed statesmen, while statesmen were taken seriously only if they talked the language of successful businessmen and "thought in continents," these private practices and devices were gradually transformed into rules and principles for the conduct of public affairs. (page 138)

Like Mr. Kurtz in Conrad's "Heart of Darkness," they were "hollow to the core," "reckless without hardihood, greedy without audacity and cruel without courage." They believed in nothing and "could get (themselves) to believe anything--anything." Expelled from a world with accepted social values, they had been thrown back upon themselves and still had nothing to fall back upon except, here and there, a streak of talent which made them as dangerous as Kurtz if they were ever allowed to return to their homelands. For the only talent that could possibly burgeon their hollow souls was the gift of fascination which makes a "splendid leader of an extreme party." (page 189)

The quotes represent Arendt's thinking that I wish had been introduced to me earlier. I presume her ideas were not more discussed, because they link unfettered capitalism and consumption with Totalitarianism. Instead, I grew up with the limited view of Totalitarianism as focused on race and racism. There was a limited connection to class and classism. I think because it cuts too close to how the world decided to move forward.

It is obvious that these secret and anonymous agents of the force of expansion felt no obligation to man-made laws. The only "law" they obeyed was the "law" of expansion, and the only proof of their "lawfulness" was success. They had to be perfectly willing to disappear into complete oblivion once failure had been proved, if for any reason they were no longer "instruments of incomparable value." As long as they were successful, the feeling of embodying forces greater than themselves made it relatively easy to resign and even to despise applause and glorification. They were monsters of conceit in their success and monsters of modesty in their failure. (page 216)

For the propaganda of totalitarian movements which precede and accompany totalitarian regimes is invariably as frank as it is mendacious, and would-be totalitarian rulers usually start their careers by boasting of their past crimes and carefully outlining their future ones. ... The attraction of evil and crime for the mob mentality is nothing new. It has always been true that the mob will greet "deeds of violence with admiring remark: it may be mean but it is very clever." (page 307)

The genuineness of these feelings can be seen in the fact that very few of this generation were cured of their war enthusiasm by actual experience of its horrors. The survivors of the trenches did not become pacifists. They cherished an experience which, they thought, might serve to separate them definitely from the hated surroundings of respectability. They clung to their memories of four years in the trenches as though they constituted an objective criterion for the establishment of the new elite. (page 329)

The totalitarian movements have been called "secret societies established in broad daylight." (page 376)

A mixture of gullibility and cynicism had been an outstanding characteristic of mob mentality before it became an everyday phenomenon of masses. In an ever-changing, incomprehensible world the masses had reached the point where they would, at the same time, believe everything and nothing, think that everything was possible and that nothing is true. The mixture in itself was remarkable enough, because it spelled the end of the illusion that gullibility was a weakness of unsuspecting primitive souls and cynicism the vice of superior and refined minds. (page 382)

I will re-read the chapter, "The Political Emancipation of the Bourgeoisie." ...more "

progress:

(page 389 of 527)
— Mar 20, 2022 01:36PM

Jul 15, 2024 07:16PM · see review

LG is currently reading

Andromache

by Euripides

bookshelves: currently-reading

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Feb 24, 2026 06:28PM

LG is currently reading

Arcadia (A Case For Willows And Lane #3)

by Peter Grainger

bookshelves: crime-mystery, fiction, currently-reading

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Feb 24, 2026 06:23PM

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LG’s Quotes

“You cannot buy the revolution. You cannot make the revolution. You can only be the revolution. It is in your spirit, or it is nowhere.”
― Ursula K. Le Guin, The Dispossessed: An Ambiguous Utopia

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“I culled poetry from odors, sounds, faces, and ordinary events occurring around me. Breezes bulged me as if I were cloth; sounds nicked their marks on my nerves; objects made impressions on my sight as if in clay. There, in the soft language, life centered and ground itself in me and I was flowing with the grain of the universe. Language placed my life experiences in a new context, freeing me for the moment to become with air as air, with clouds as clouds, from which new associations arose to engage me in present life in a more purposeful way. ”
― Jimmy Santiago Baca, A Place to Stand

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