So this is the beginning of a fake class, seminar, 'colloquy' of some important books about authoritarianism, liberal democracy, and the condition of our future. It will not be delivered as live lectures, just texts. Nevertheless I'd like you to imagine that we're in a classroom setting where you can interpolate your own discussions. All throughout, I'm going to interrupt the text for classroom-type questions for you to ponder at your leisure.
I'm mostly going to present this as commentaries on important quotes from the books, not summations of the books and their theses. The point of these 'talks' is not the books themselves but how they relate to the situations of our present and future: what insights we gain, how they may let us understand our current zeitgeist and future predicaments. In just one month we have been thrown into a new era, the likes of which most countries on earth have experienced many times, but the United States has experienced not even once.
Thus, most of these books will be centered on the 20th century experience, the nearest experience of crisis to our own, and thus require the relative least amount of empathy to imagine ourselves in the place of those before us. As the preponderance of these books were written about the situation of Western countries, the majority of these books will concentrate on the situations of the West over the global East or South. Nevertheless, we will apply many of the insights of these books to the situation of other regions, which play an enormous, perhaps unprecedented role in modern global affairs.
As there are a lot of points to get through, the prose will be largely unedited, conversational and free-flowing with an intent to convey information rather than readability. The teacher will do his best to keep his own biases to a minimum. He believes in 'value free scholarship,' that scholarship for its own sake has value in itself and is a more reliable route to the proper course of action than the deliberate advancement of a point of view. Nevertheless, as with any analysis, conclusions must be drawn, and all conclusions necessarily betray a certain bias. Prehaps all perceptions are ideologically based, but just as the human body has dozens of benign tumors, it is possible to hold an ideology that does not lethally refract one's vision. Even so a good teacher can try to present the full issue in all its sides, particularly because ideology is the subject of this class: understanding why people come to believe what they believe. Inevitably, there will be people who would read these talks and find many conclusions uncharitable, such sentiments can't be helped, but if this teacher is successful in his endeavor, it will say more about reader than writer.
Lastly, we will adopt a format for every talk I'm going to pretentiously call 'dualities' to help orient the reader/student about the subject being spoken. The reason I call them 'dualities' is because I believe that more than anything else, it's the divided self, the tensions between our ideals and our realities, that break ground for insight. Perhaps these new thoughts are no better than the thoughts before, perhaps they inadvertently create their own dualities, or perhaps these dualities lead us right back to where we were. And sometimes there are not two sides to every issue, but three or four, necessitating trialities or quadralities, and sometimes there is only one side to an issue because any argument against it come up with so far is nonsense, and so far as we know yet those are monalities. Nevertheless, I believe dualities is the best way to frame these discussions.
There is no accurate way to read history. There is no 'monality' that explains how it all works, and one must always beware the ideologue who believes in any explanation that covers all with deep suspicion. Nevertheless, within our limited understanding, there are possibilities, percentages, causes and effects that are more likely than others, and those possible percentages are what we aim to entertain.
The Origins of Totalitarianism is not a book about any one thesis. It's at once a work that purports to explain how totalitarianism works, the social history that led to its formation, the intellectual underpinnings of the totalitarian philosophy - such as they are, and the conditions which lead people to be particularly susceptible to it. It is both a difficult book and not particularly difficult. Hannah Arendt is a clear and quotable writer, but she is nevertheless long-winded and so full of references to historical figures that it can take twenty years of immersion in history to know her references. The insights of this book coruscate from the page, but like many of the best books, it is very difficult to take one over-arching insight from the whole thing.
So that is why we must present the book in small, digestible parts, and relate them to our current realities.
And therefore, we must start with a very bleak one from early in the book.
Oppression vs. Use
'Neither oppression nor exploitation is ever the main cause for resentment; wealth without visible function is much more intolerable because nobody can understand why it should be tolerated. ... Antisemitism reached its climax when Jews had similarly lost their public functions and their influence, and were left with nothing but wealth.'
In other words: Hitler stoked antisemitism by stripping Jews of their societal use, and the more he stripped them of means to prove their societal use, the more hated Jews became to Germany. We should specify immediately, this does not mean that the Trump administratoin will be as lethal as Hitler, though you can't help acknowledge that, given the unstable state of the world, there is a percentage chance they will be more lethal, and a small percentage chance that they mean to be exactly that. But that is not the point of why we mention this quote.
The point is that in the midst of economic hardship, Germans saw that Jews were left with nothing but unaccountable wealth, and that caused more resentment than actual oppression from the government ever could.
Here's Arendt again:
"What makes men obey and tolerate real power and, on the other hand, hate people who have wealth without power, is the rational instinct that power has a certain function and is of some general use. Even exploitation and oppression still make society work and establish some kind of order. Only wealth without power or aloofness without a policy are felt to be parasitical, useless, revolting, because such conditions cut all the threads which tie men together. Wealth which does not exploit lacks the relationship which exists between exploiter and exploited;..."
In your experience, in your perception, does this seem true? Does envy spur you to more immediate anger than suffering?
I don't need to tell you what this points to in our current predicament. Everyone can see the writing on the wall and the ensuing hatred of liberals that will only increase as time goes on. Not just demographic minorities: all liberals, all 'blue staters.' If a major recession is coming, America's majority blue states still live in 71% of the American economy and can live on their savings long after the majority red states live in privation and hardship. Even if the flip side is true and Trump's proposal to increase drilling causes more prosperity in red America, the hatred will increase because Red America will see itself as earning its wealth while Blue America's wealth is unearned.
The wholesale stripping of governmental experience and authority can easily ruin the American economy and therefore the world's, but even through that, it is easily possible that any oppression meted out by a new regime would be lapped up, even respected, because people seem innately programmed to trust their surroundings until the threat against them is immediately present.
This does not mean that liberals will be sent to concentration camps, or any minority, but it does mean that the current polarization is likely to be a weak brew next to what's coming and the tensions of our society will only ratchet up further. One needs to be mindful of the dangers.
Contrary to our current perceptions, societies have undergone tensions far worse than ours and come out the other side still standing: insurrection, riots, targeted violence for years and years. We're often told to think of the 1950s America as the ultimate time of peace and prosperity: yet it was a time that easily could have dissolved in a pool of nuclear ash.
Still more in favor of liberals and left, the Trump administration has only begun. If disasters are to come, then the time for them to receive blame is ample. For better or worse, this is most likely to come about if a large number of journalists abandon the search for objective reporting in proportions similar to how right wing journalism has, in favor of a nakedly ideological spin on all events: carrying the intersectional ideology prevalent in universities fully and unapologetically into politics, irregardless of objective truth. This tactic would have the added benefit that most conservatives already believe liberals do precisely that and would be completely unprepared for an opposition that resembles themselves.
The consequences of such a metamorphosis for the next era could only be speculated about, but the future abandonment of objective truth by all political actors is a likely reality in our near-future, with the inevitable end result that objective truth in human events will be increasingly impossible to ascertain.
I can't help but air an Arendt quote from much later in the book that we'll obviously get to in a later talk:
- 'In an ever changing and incomprehensible world the masses had reached the point when they would, at the same time, believe everything and nothing, think that everything was possible and nothing is true. ... Mass propaganda discovered that its audience was ready at all times to believe the worst, no matter how absurd, and did not particularly object to being deceived because it held every statement to be a lie anyhow. The totalitarian leaders based their propaganda on the correct psychological assumption that, under such conditions, one could make people believe the most fantastic statements one day, and trust that if the next day they were given irrefutable proof of their falsehood, they would take refuge in cynicism; instead of deserting the leaders who had lied to them, they would protest that they had known all along that the statement was a lie and would admire the leaders for their superior tactical cleverness.'
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Bigotry vs. Use
So now we must come to an astonishing quote about antisemitism and the Holocaust. We will, of course, relate it to the current situation in Gaza, but also to questions of identity in modern America. This quote from Arendt was received with shock back in 1951, and it's no less shocking today.
'The birth and growth of modern antisemitism has been accompanied by an interconnectedness with Jewish assimilation, the secularization and withering away of old religious and spiritual values of Judaism. What actually happened was that great parts of the Jewish people were at the same time threatened with physical extinction from without and dissolution from within. In this situation, Jews concerned with the survival of their people would, in a curious desperate misinterpretation, hit on the consoling idea that antisemitism, after all, might be an excellent means of keeping people together, so that the assumption of eternal antisemitism would even imply an eternal guarantee of Jewish existence. This superstition, a secularized travesty of the idea of eternity inherent in a faith in chosenness and a Messianic hope, has been strengthened through the fact that for many centuries the Jews experienced the Christian brand of hostility which was indeed a powerful agent of preservation, spiritually as well as politically. The Jews mistook modern anti-Christian antisemitism for the old religious Jew hatred--and this all the more innocently because their assimilation had bypassed Christianity in its religious and cultural aspect. Confronted with an obvious symptom of the decline of Christianity, they could therefore imagine in all ignorance that this was some revival of the so-called "Dark Ages." Ignorance or misunderstanding of their own past were partly responsible for their fatal underestimation of the actual and unprecedented dangers which lay ahead. But one should also bear in mind lack of political ability and judgement have been caused by the very nature of Jewish history, the history of a people without a government, without a country, and without a language. Jewish history offers the extraordinary spectacle of a people, unique in this respect, which began its history with a well-defined concept of history and an almost conscious resolution to achieve a well-circumscribed plan on earth and then, without giving up the concept, avoided all political action for two-thousand years. The result was that the political history of the Jewish people became even more dependent upon unforeseen, accidental factors than the history of other nations, so that Jews stumbled from one role to the other and accepted responsibility for none.'
Can someone explain what this quote means in one sentence?
What people interpreted this quote to mean is that Jews bear some mark of responsibility for the Holocaust.
How can Jews ever be said to be responsible for something so awful that befell particularly them?
What this proposition ultimately means is that by seeing antisemitism everywhere, popping up in every historical era, Jews did not give non-Jews the option to be anything but antisemites unless they agreed with Jews on every point, which both did not allow non-Jews to embrace Jews in any way but on Jews' terms, and also provoked non-Jews into further resentment of Jews that caused them to embrace more antisemitic beliefs. Which in turn doomed Jews to the worst results of antisemitism.
I don't say I agree with this, I'm just presenting the argument.
I think most everybody would see how this argument relates to the current situation in Gaza, so I don't need to comment further on it, but I do want to ask you to consider a few questions, and if you think you have immediate answers, wait a few minutes and ponder them again:
1. Many Jews see a threat in their neighbors that may be equivalent in effect to the Holocaust. Are they correct or incorrect?
2. Regardless of whether it's true or false that there is antisemitism in the denial of genocide's likelihood, does the Jewish accusation of antisemitism in many Westerners' denial make Westerners more likely or less likely to embrace antisemitism? And does it make Israelis more doomed or less doomed to that likelihood of genocide?
And now I'm going to ask questions that are even more provocative.
1. Is the proposition of the American left that there is bigotry in the denial of DEI's principals (diversity, equality, and inclusion) true? And if it is, how is that different from the Jewish insistence that there's antsemitism in so many critiques of Israel?
2. Regardless of whether it's true or or false that rejection of DEI's necessity is bigoted, does that accusation make people more or less likely to embrace bigotry?
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Persecution vs. Prediction
'...the Jews, the only non-national European people, were threatened more than any other by the sudden collapse of the system of nation states. ... - 'It is... more than accidental that the catastrophic defeats of the peoples of Europe began with the catastrophe of the Jewish people. It was particularly easy to begin the dissolution of the precarious European balance of power with the elimination of the Jews, and particularly difficult to understand that more was involved in this elimination than an unusually cruel nationalism or an ill-timed revival of "old prejudices." When the catastrophe came, the fate of the Jewish people was considered a "special case" whose history follows no exceptional laws, and whose destiny was therefore of no general relevance.'
In other words, the Jews were persecuted, and that was followed by the persecution of all of Europe. This provokes a few more questions:
1. Was the persecution of Jews unconnected to the imminent persecution of Europe, was it related, or was it a cause?
2. If, heaven forbid, a certain minority in the United States were to be persecuted on a level well past what they might be now, does that portend the persecution of all Americans?
3. If it's true that the persecution of one group might portend the persecution of all, how might that happen?
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Unity vs. Division
'...the collapse of German Jewry was preceded by its split into innumerable factions, each of which believed and hoped that its basic human rights would be protected by special privileges... It looked as though the annihilation of all individuals of Jewish origin was being preceded by the bloodless destruction and self-dissolution of the Jewish people, as though the Jewish people had owed its existence exclusively to other peoples and their hatred.'
The persecution of Jews split Jews into many different groups: many upper-middle class German and Austrian Jews thought themselves above the rabble of other Jews, poor Austro-German Jews thought themselves better than immigrant Jews from Poland and Russia, even the Polish-Russian Jews thought themselves better than Romanian Jews, and everybody thought themselves better than orthodox Jews.
There was a definitively calibrated hierarchy of privilege in Jewish life before World War II, and the oppression of Jews only brought it out further. World War II generally brought out a kind of hierarchy of privilege among European peoples - invasion by a totalitarian dictatorship usually does that.
This sounds not too different from the very proliferent theory of intersectionality which holds that oppression and privilege is unevenly distributed due to an intersecting network of identities that are placed in a hierarchy of privilege, and creates a composite in which a person, depending on their identity, can be oppressed doubly, triply, or by multiples, or, if they win the identity lottery, can be multiply privileged. So this of course leads to further questions?
1. If various oppressed identities unite in a goal to overthrow this hierarchy of privilege, can it be cast aside?
2. If it is cast aside, what would have to happen in order for a new hierarchy not to emerge? Would it be impossible to stop?
3. Picture yourself as an oppressed individual rather than a member of the community of the oppressed. Wouldn't it be more likely for you and your loved ones to survive oppressive circumstances if you didn't worry about helping other oppressed people? Might it even help occasionally to actively sabotage them?
3a. How do you convince oppressed people looking out only for themselves to look out for everyone? Is it even possible?
4. How can you convince people who care about the oppression of one particular identity to care about the oppression of every identity? Particularly in those cases when one of those oppressed groups is in bitter conflict with another oppressed group?
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Government: Good Use vs Bad Use
Here's a point that Arendt makes that's too convoluted to quote:
All through their history, Jews have always viewed the governments which protected them with gratitude and benefit, seeing government as what saves them from the violence of the common rabble. This proved to be an apocalyptic catastrophe in the 20th century. Each class of society which came into conflict with the state became antisemitic because the only social group which seemed to represent the state were the Jews - a process repeated in Germany during the Weimar Republic which existed between 1919 and 1933. So when the new regime seized power, the very levers of the state which once protected Jews were used to oppress Jews. And this is roughly the thousandth time this process was repeated in Jewish history.
Whatever was true in the past for the American government's relation to them, most American minorities view governmental protection with some measure of similar gratitude.
Gird your loins for these next two questions:
1. If the new American administration turns revokes many governmental protections, will this spell catastrophe for certain minorities in the US? If so, what would the catastrophes be?
2. If the US government no longer protects them, what options, should they require them, do these minorities have for protection: to either provide it for themselves or through assistance from others?
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'The antisemites' belief that their claim to exclusive rule was no more than what the Jews had in fact achieved, ... They could pretend to fight the Jews exactly as the workers were fighting the bourgeoisie. Their advantage was that by attacking the Jews, who were believed to be a secret power behind the governments, they could openly attack the state itself,'
The conflation of the state with minorities is in so many ways what we're seeing in today's right wing: not just in America but in Europe as well. On both sides of the Atlantic, belief that so many minorities should not be present in society is embedded with frustration at governments for subsidizing their presence.
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Furthermore, when so many right-wingers speak of a secret 'deep state' that secretly controls the government, whom do they mean? Part of the problem with alleging a conspiracy of the 'deep state' is that no one can properly define it. How do you define a secret network when you don't know what the network is? Is it a conspiracy of a few powerful people? Is it thousands of government workers? Maybe the deep state is not even people, maybe it's the basic system of how our government works.
But the fact that nobody can agree on a definition of something so allegedly powerful it makes it all the less likely that it exists.
But get inside their heads: if the deep state does exist, whom do you think would comprise it?
We should remember that 19% of federal workers are African-American and 13% is LGBTQ.
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