The Origins of Totalitarianism

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Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 1973 - History - 527 pages

"How could such a book speak so powerfully to our present moment? The short answer is that we, too, live in dark times, even if they are different and perhaps less dark, and "Origins" raises a set of fundamental questions about how tyranny can arise and the dangerous forms of inhumanity to which it can lead." Jeffrey C. Isaac, The Washington Post

Hannah Arendt's definitive work on totalitarianism and an essential component of any study of twentieth-century political history

The Origins of Totalitarianism begins with the rise of anti-Semitism in central and western Europe in the 1800s and continues with an examination of European colonial imperialism from 1884 to the outbreak of World War I. Arendt explores the institutions and operations of totalitarian movements, focusing on the two genuine forms of totalitarian government in our time--Nazi Germany and Stalinist Russia--which she adroitly recognizes were two sides of the same coin, rather than opposing philosophies of Right and Left. From this vantage point, she discusses the evolution of classes into masses, the role of propaganda in dealing with the nontotalitarian world, the use of terror, and the nature of isolation and loneliness as preconditions for total domination.

From inside the book

Contents

The Jews the NationState and the Birth
11
The Jews and Society
54
Between Vice and Crime
79
The Dreyfus Affair
89
Pardon and Its Significance
119
IMPERIALISM
121
The Alliance Between
147
RaceThinking Before Racism
158
Continental Imperialism the PanMovements
222
Party and Movement
250
The Decline of the NationState and the
267
TOTALITARIANISM
303
The Totalitarian Movement
341
Organization
364
Ideology and Terror
460
Bibliography
483

Race Unity as a Substitute
175
Race and Bureaucracy
185
Character
207

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About the author (1973)

Hannah Arendt (1906-1975) is considered one of the most important and influential thinkers of the twentieth century. A political theorist and philosopher, she is also the author of Crises of the Republic, On Violence, The Life of the Mind, and Men in Dark Times. The Origins of Totalitarianism was first published in 1951.

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