Arendt’s Analysis: Totalitarianism, Human Rights, and the Masses
The Rights of Man and Totalitarianism
The Rights of Man: The Declaration of the Rights of Man signified a shift where law originated from humanity, not divine command or historical custom.
In this newly secularized and emancipated society, individuals became uncertain about social and human rights, previously secured by social, spiritual, and religious forces outside of political structures.
– “The fundamental deprivation of human rights is manifested first and above all in the deprivation of a place in the world which makes opinions significant and actions effective” –
Totalitarian regimes often justify crimes against human rights by claiming that the good of the whole outweighs the rights of the individual (as exemplified by Hitler’s motto: “Right is what is good for the German people”).
Hannah Arendt, The Totalitarian Government
- Totalitarianism differs fundamentally from other forms of political oppression like tyranny and dictatorship.
- While other forms of oppression tend to preserve existing social, legal, and political structures, totalitarianism destroys these structures and replaces them with a single ideology and hierarchy.
- Totalitarianism is both a means and an end. It doesn’t seek approval or understanding from rival ideologies. A totalitarian state operates with its own self-contained values and rules within a single ideology. Arendt defines an ideology as ‘…isms which to the satisfaction of their adherents can explain everything and every occurrence by deducing it from a single premise…’ (Arendt, p603)
- A totalitarian state prefers citizens who cannot distinguish between right and wrong over thinking citizens who agree with the state.
- A totalitarian state expects each citizen to fulfill one of two roles: Victim or Executioner. If the state identifies enemies, it relies on other citizens to identify and eliminate them, thus protecting the state.
The Role of the Masses in Totalitarianism
Totalitarian movements thrive where there are masses with an appetite for political organization. These masses lack a consciousness of common interest and the specific class articulation expressed in determined, limited, and obtainable goals.
The breakdown of the class system in European nation-states was a dramatic event in German history, favoring the rise of Nazism. Similarly, the absence of social stratification in Russia’s rural population facilitated the Bolshevik overthrow of the Kerensky government.
Totalitarian Movement: Propaganda and Organization
Propaganda: Masses are convinced not by facts, but by the consistency of the system they are part of. The most effective fiction of Nazi propaganda was the story of a Jewish world conspiracy.
Organization: Totalitarian organizations translate propaganda lies into a functioning reality, building a society where members act according to the rules of a fictitious world. This is achieved through a hierarchically organized chain of command.
Hitler advocated dividing the masses won through propaganda into two categories: sympathizers and members. He believed most people are too lazy and cowardly, and only a minority will fight for their convictions. He consciously enlarged the ranks of sympathizers while strictly limiting party membership.
Totalitarian movements function as “secret societies established in broad daylight,” characterized by:
- Hierarchies based on degrees of “initiation”
- Consistent lying to deceive the non-initiated masses
- Unquestioning obedience from members
- Rituals (e.g., marches around Red Square in Moscow, Nuremberg party days)
- Loyalty in life and death
Ideology and Terror in Totalitarian Regimes
Totalitarianism has shattered the traditional dichotomy between lawful and lawless government, between arbitrary and legitimate power. The inseparability of lawful government and legitimate power from lawlessness and arbitrary power was previously unquestioned.
Totalitarian policy doesn’t replace laws but promises to release the fulfillment of law from human action and will. It promises justice by claiming to make mankind the embodiment of the law: identification between man and law.
- Ideologies are ‘isms which, to the satisfaction of their adherents, can explain everything and every occurrence by deducing it from a single premise.’
- It is the logic of an idea applied to history, resulting in the unfolding of a process in constant change. The ideology treats events as following the same “law” as the logical exposition of its “idea.”
Character of Ideology
- Claim to total explanation
- Ideological thinking becomes independent of all experience
- Emancipation of thought from experience through certain methods of demonstration
The Race Myth in Totalitarian Ideology
Alfred Rosenberg elaborated the race theory into a philosophy of history in Der Mythus des 20. Jahrhunderts (1930), a principal statement of national socialist ideology. Rosenberg argued that all history must be rewritten and reinterpreted as a struggle between races, specifically between the Aryan race and all lower breeds.
The racial theory of nationalist policy:
- Led to policies encouraging population increase, particularly of Aryan elements, by subsidizing marriage and large families.
- Produced the eugenic legislation of 1933.
- Produced the anti-Jewish legislation of 1935 and 1938, aiming to increase or maintain racial purity.
Racial theory and anti-Semitism helped solidify national socialism by:
- Transmuting various hatreds, fears, resentments, and class antagonisms into fear of a single tangible enemy.
- Providing ideological support for Hitler’s expansionist policy to the east, targeting Slavic peoples and coinciding with anti-Semitism and the belief in German racial superiority.
Lebensraum and Geopolitik
The concept of Lebensraum, like racial theory, was not exclusively German. Swedish political scientist Rudolf Kjellén of the University of Uppsala expanded the plan for a powerful Germany into a philosophy called Geopolitik, which national socialism popularized.