For Hannah Arendt, totalitarianism is rooted in loneliness

For Hannah Arendt, totalitarianism is rooted in loneliness(aeon.co)

148 points by ALee 5 years ago | 74 comments

hexxiiiz 5 years ago |

"But in order to make individuals susceptible to ideology, you must first ruin their relationship to themselves and others by making them sceptical and cynical, so that they can no longer rely upon their own judgment"

As much as I am sure this does happen quite a lot, something that does not get enough emphasis is how much people's relationships to themselves erode under the very ordinary conditions of quotidian life with its stresses, indignities, and disappointments. Nothing so deliberate as a propaganda campaign is needed for this first step to already take hold of people through the subtle misery of their personal relationships. This is not to say that institutions and ideologies are not involved with this process, but I think the unconscious subtleties of this all too easily get overlooked when we culturally take a normative view of what it means to be mentally healthy as successfully living a normal life.

Arendt, in the same book, also argued that personal resentments fueled the rise of fascist regimes. I think in general, if, as a society, we want to curtail the rise of totalitarian politics, we have to really address the very personal individual antagonisms that arise in people's everyday lives; loneliness among them, but not alone as the sole culprit by a longshot.

motohagiography 5 years ago | |

I'm over-commenting on this thread, but this is a pet topic of mine. A controversial observation of hers was that both fascism and communism were mere national movements, limited to their nation states, where what distinguished totalitarianism as a new form itself was using those nations as stepping stones and vessels for global domination. She gives some examples of totalitarian leaders rejecting both of these ideologies as not sufficiently ambitious, after using them as stepping stones.

My own interpretation is that it begins by inculcating an identity of shame and powerlessness, which respectively create the necessary righteous cruelty and infinite appetite for power to get a totalitarian movement going and neutralizing opposition to its aims, e.g. "for good men to do nothing." It is systematized, and simple enough to iterate and scale, because what it truly was is directed chaos. Defeating it is also simple set of rules, and is in fact related to defeating loneliness as well, but that's a much longer topic.

rzodkiew 5 years ago | | |

I think you're quite close with the inculcation of identity of shame and powerlessness. I'd go one step further and say it's inculcating of identity in general. As well as manufactured desires to keep power systems in place.

People are not encouraged to find their own identity or explore inner mind. It's all bread and circus everywhere, to stop you from paying attention to your inner self. We have ancient teachings on this topic dating way, way back (like Upanishads), yet we still haven't found a good way to actually teach and implement them.

PaulHoule 5 years ago | | |

If anything the socialist movement foundered in the 1920s in that internationalism didn't sell politically.

For instance, Lenin and Co immediately surrendered to the Germans because "it is not our war" and the Germans said "Great! Here's our list of demands!" and it was an embarrassment given that Germany lost the war a month later.

See the Chris Harman classic

https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/lost-revolution-chris-harma...

to see what went down in Germany afterwards.

djmips 5 years ago | | |

Where does humiliation factor in. I think this is one of the most powerful emotions and likely a big factor in the rise of totalitarian leaders.

frongpik 5 years ago | |

That's a clever observation. To put it simpler, a dictator is a magnet that aligns individual resentments of citizens. People can't align resentment themselves without an external guide. But loneliness isn't the cause of resentment, it's rather the feeling of being excluded. Without the anchor of inner philosophy, one can be easily manipulated into building up the resentment and directing it at a false target.

motohagiography 5 years ago |

That aspect of her thesis was called political "atomization," which was the creation of this lonely state by isolating people from each other, and ultimately from truth, so that they become neutralized to the totalitarian agenda. The destruction of communities, families, and social connections is a totalitarian process and agenda.

It was the result of a campaign of arbitrariness and farcical lying because the real target and conquest of totalitarianism is truth itself. When nothing can be believed, all opposition is neutralized. This neutralization and eventual liquidation is the totalitarian process. Activists project this as "stochastic terror," these days, but the technique goes back over a couple hundred years. What was exceptionally notable about that book, and is a bullet point in the article, is that the very idea of history as progress itself is the initial condition of ideology.

The final chapter "ideology and terror," is the distillation I think people should read today, but the whole book, particularly the initial chapters that are an unblinking view of antisemitism, colonial thinking, and the nation state are sound foundations for thinking about the 20th century.

8fhdkjw039hd 5 years ago |

Growing up, the internet did not feel real to me. Just a collection of memes fighting each other, fire-walled from reality. It seemed like an entertaining farce but not real.

This was relatively true for the internet I grew up with, but it is certainly not true now. What happened in the capital was quite a wake up call. And much of the blame for it does look to be the result of things like click-through maximization and engagement maximization pushing people towards extremes, things like karma and likes allocating status to those staking out extreme positions. It is a terrifying thing to think about, but if you start thinking of social media influencers and followers as a sort of client-patron relationship, the historical precedents are not comforting.

For myself, I am coming to terms with the fact that I cannot really trust any opinions that have been inculcated in me during the wild years of social media. I have deleted my Reddit and Facebook accounts, have diligently trained the YouTube algorithms to avoid any even remotely political content. I no longer trust myself to develop sensible opinions in such an adversarial environment and am doing my best to just not have political opinions and focus on simple things like maths and programming.

Steve Omohundro had a talk recently where he described the need for "personal AIs" to help individuals resist manipulation from corporate AIs maximizing engagement. Perhaps once such things like this exist, I will allow myself to have opinions. But until then, I don't think I have any hope of making sense of this cacophony tuned for my engagement. Until I get such a thing, this will be my last post on HackerNews.

mLuby 5 years ago |

Some passages that stood out to me:

> Isolation and loneliness are not the same. I can be isolated – that is in a situation in which I cannot act, because there is nobody who will act with me – without being lonely; and I can be lonely – that is in a situation in which I as a person feel myself deserted by all human companionship – without being isolated.

> Totalitarianism uses isolation to deprive people of human companionship, making action in the world impossible, while destroying the space of solitude.

> One is taught to distrust oneself and others, and to always rely upon the ideology of the movement, which must be right. But in order to make individuals susceptible to ideology, you must first ruin their relationship to themselves and others.

> Amid the chaos and uncertainty of human existence, we need a sense of place and meaning. We need roots. And ideologies, like the Sirens in Homer’s Odyssey, appeal to us. But those who succumb to the siren song of ideological thinking…can’t confront themselves in thinking because, if they do, they risk undermining the ideological beliefs that have given them a sense of purpose and place.

keiferski 5 years ago |

What this analysis misses is the role of individualism. Probably because individualism = unquestionably good is perhaps the single most foundational belief of modern Western civilization.

Twentieth-century totalitarianism could only have arisen from an industrial world in which the local social networks of family, village, and church were destroyed in the process of urbanization. Subsequently the less local social bonds one has, the more one becomes susceptible to mass political movements and extremist ideologies.

Unfortunately the internet has only exacerbated this, where it’s not uncommon to have more social interaction (even if it’s only watching someone else) online than in person.

Matticus_Rex 5 years ago | |

The American style of individualism in its traditional form is hardly anti-family/village/church. In fact, one of its notable characteristics for early observers used to European values was that Americans were prolific joiners. Want to do something? Start a club for it! That has broken down over the last decades, but blaming it on individualism seems questionable at best.

keiferski 5 years ago | | |

Nowhere in my comment did I say American.

The point is that urbanization and industrialization encouraged individualism. Today, the market itself does so.

api 5 years ago | |

This misses other major factors including the role of ideology itself. People are thinking beings and ideas drive a great deal of human behavior. The 20th century saw the rise of collectivist utopian ideologies.

Last but not least it's important to remember that humans have always been fighting and trying to control one another. 20th century war, genocide, and totalitarianism is new only in its scale.

totemandtoken 5 years ago |

Interesting this is trending on hackernews when a few days ago an article on using Tulpas to alleviate loneliness was trending. Hackernews zeitgeist - are you alright?

jimmyvalmer 5 years ago |

I read Origins two weeks ago. Talk about couching overstatement in wordy layers of psychobabble. This piece is similarly long-winded and "in my feels" speculative.

everybodyknows 5 years ago | |

For a treatment of the subject that remains firmly grounded in examples from history -- Martin Luther, Napoleon, Hitler -- try Eric Hoffer's The True Believer.

matz1 5 years ago |

Probably why government around the world like lockdown so much.

hh3k0 5 years ago | |

You are aware that the vast majority of countries are democracies, right?

mikem170 5 years ago | | |

Was there even one government that let their citizens vote on quarantine measures? That's what democracy is, or originally was, right?

matz1 5 years ago | | |

Yes, lockdown gives them the power to be little totalitarian.

billfruit 5 years ago |

Didn't Rebecca West also write about Authoritarianism about the same time as Arendt did? How did they view the topic differently?

PaulHoule 5 years ago |

"Mother should I build the wall?"

motohagiography 5 years ago | |

Such a poignant song about that generation and it foretold how they would run things.

erichocean 5 years ago |

It is disappointing Arendt is considered to be some kind of authority on totalitarianism (or worse still: evil). Unsurprising, though: TPTB find her conclusions useful, almost like she works backwards, telling powerful people what they want to hear…

Make of that what you will.