Ben’s Reviews > The Origins of Totalitarianism > Status Update

The final section, on totalitarianism itself, is def the weakest. So many of the observations have become commonplaces. And 'totalitarianism', in Arendt's very confined definition, is today hard to imagine. Arendt was very good at identifying the pathologies of liberalism and of the reactions to it, but did not anticipate the extent to which liberalism could internalize those reactions.

The section on stateless people - and especially the bit about the development of an international 'police policy' - feels like it could have been written today

Funny, she predicts that social antisemitism - race prejudice - could have a force in the United States that it could never have in Europe, because of unparalleled Jewish integration. In fact, contemporary American antisemitism is more political than ever - hatred of Jews as a(n imagined) class - with little to no racial/social element. Cuts to some of the main criticisms of Arendt: social/political divide, and race.