The Origins of Totalitarianism

Dear Reader,

This week I was joined by Dr. Suzanne Schneider.

Dr. Schneider is a historian, writer, and educator. She received her PhD from the Department of Middle East, South Asian, and African Studies at Columbia University, and from 2015-2023 served as Deputy Director of the Brooklyn Institute for Social Research, where she remains a core faculty member. Suzanne is the author of Mandatory Separation: Religion, Education, and Mass Politics in Palestine and The Apocalypse and the End of History: Modern Jihad and the Crisis of Liberalism. Her writing about contemporary politics, religion, and violence has appeared in The New Republic, Mother Jones, The Washington Post, Jewish Currents, Foreign Policy, n+1, and Aeon among other outlets.

We talked about the relationship between racism and imperialism, racism and classicism, and how Arendt defines bureaucracy and ideology. Dr. Schneider brought a historians perspective to Arendt’s discussion of the nation-state in the 19th century.

“States make nations, nations don’t make states.”

We looked at the most controversial passages in the book and reflected on how Arendt structures her argument around the rise of the administrative state.

What can Origins teach us about our political moment right now?

For more insight on the rise of the new right today, subscribe to Dr. Schneider’s Substack, Dr. Small Talk here:

---

And if you’re looking for a good place to start:

• We discussed:

  Andalusian Blues: notes on the end of a world

• And the new right ideology:

  Bonus: The Yarvin Explainer