Dear Reader,
Welcome to #20Tuesdays: 20 lessons from Hannah Arendt’s The Origins of Totalitarianism.
As we barrel toward another election, I wanted to create a space for people to come together.
Thinking back on the past ten years of teaching Origins, I’ve made a list of the most important lessons from Arendt’s work that students return to time and again. From now until November 5th, I will share one lesson with you on Tuesdays.
You can find past posts here.
Until Tuesday,
Sam
Lesson #13: Terror is used to dominate human beings from within.
Key quotes:
A fundamental difference between modern dictatorships and all other tyrannies of the past is that terror is no longer used as a means to exterminate and frighten opponents, but as an instrument to rule masses of people who are perfectly obedient. Terror as we know it today strikes without any preliminary provocation, its victims are innocent even from the point of view of the persecutor. This was the case in Nazi Germany when full terror was directed against Jews, i.e., against people with certain common characteristics which were independent of their specific behavior.
Totalitarianism is never content to rule by external means, namely, through the state and a machinery of violence; thanks to its peculiar ideology and the role assigned to it in this apparatus of coercion, totalitarianism has discovered a means of dominating and terrorizing human beings from within. In this sense it eliminates the distance between the rulers and the ruled and achieves a condition in which power and the will to power, as we understand them, play no role, or at best, a secondary role.
It was recognized early and has frequently been asserted that in totalitarian countries propaganda and terror present two sides of the same coin. This, however, is only partly true. Wherever totalitarianism possesses absolute control, it replaces propaganda with indoctrination and uses violence not so much to frighten people (this is done only in the initial stages when political opposition still exists) as to realize constantly its ideological doctrines and its practical lies.
Terror continues to be used by totalitarian regimes even when its psychological aims are achieved: its real horror is that it reigns over a completely subdued population. Where the rule of terror is brought to perfection, as in concentration camps, propaganda disappears entirely; it was even expressly prohibited in Nazi Germany.
Core idea:
Terror is the essence of totalitarianism.
How Terror Rules: Instill—Install
Terror instills a sense of trepidation and fear into the very heart of human beings, controlling their inner most feelings and thoughts.
The rule-bound regime of Nazi ideology compelled individuals on the basis of terror.
They used propanda to instill a belief based on terror in order to install ordinary citizens as members of the movement to carry out the will of the regime.
Arendt argues that the ground of all action in a free society is natality. Natality is the principle of new beginnings, the root of political action, and the possibility of freedom. Everytime one acts, one sets something new, which cannot be predicted, into motion. In a totalitarian society, the ground of all action is terror. Individuals are moved to act from a place of fear—a place of fear that has been designed by the propaganda of the movement. And the purpose of the individual’s action is to carry out the will of the movement, to bring the future, which is known, into existence.
Natality is the promise of new beginnings; it is the idea that the world can always be other than it is, but terror is used to force individuals to act in order to make prophetic visions come true. In other words, while natality promises new beginnings, terror forces individuals to act to fulfill prophetic visions.
Terror is an instrument of control that cannot abide anything beyond its sweep. It is tragic by definition—its outcome is predetermined, requiring only the sacrifice of individuals to the movement. Indviduals are moved by propaganda to join the movement; they act from a place of terror, of fear, of trepidation. Their world is a closed world, a still world, a world of unending violence that denies the pure creative—natal—potential of human beings.
Terror, in this sense, is perhaps the most certain force we know. Propaganda, crafted to appeal to concepts of Nature or race, appeals to fear of the Other. (Think about tales of immigrants (others) eating their pets.) And its power is so absolute that it freezes the minds and hearts of those who fall under its spell.
Here’s a video introducing Arendt on ideology and terror:
Some further reading
Questions for conversation:
What is the role of ideology in sustaining terror?
Why is terror the essential mechanism for maintaining control in a totalitarian regime?
What might terror sound like today?
Thank you for reading!
Until Tuesday,
Sam