Hannah Arendt - Ideology and Terror (seminar)

For my seminar paper this semester I've been looking at 'Ideology and Terror', which forms the concluding chapter of Hannah Arendt's work The Origins of Totalitarianism.  In this chapter, Arendt tries to sum up exactly how totalitarianism worked in the cases of Stalin's Russia and Nazi Germany.

The chapter itself is quite dense and involved, I will first attempt to list the key points below and then expand upon them where necessary:

• Totalitarianism is essentially different to other forms of political oppression (such as tyranny and dictatorship)
• While other forms of oppression tended to leave a states existing social, legal and political structures in place, totalitarianism effectively destroys these structures and replaces them with a single ideology and hierarchy.  
• Totalitarianism is a means and end to itself, it does not seek the approbation or understanding of other, rival, schools of thought.  A totalitarian state has its own self-contained set of values and rules, that operate within a single ideology.  Arendt defines an ideology as '...isms which to the satisfaction of their adherents can explain everything and every occurrence by deducing it from a single premise...' (Arendt, p603)
• A totalitarian state prefers citizens who cannot tell the difference between right and wrong to a thinking citizen that agrees with the state.  
• A totalitarian state expects each citizen to be able to perform one of two roles:  Victim or Executioner.  If the state perceives that certain citizens are enemies, it relies upon the other citizens to identify these enemies and execute them, thereby protecting the state as a whole. 

Let us examine an example of how a Totalitarian state has worked.  Hitler was greatly impressed by Darwin's Theory of Evolution.  In desiring Germany to be populated by the Aryan ideal, Hitler believed that he was acting to increase Germany's future strength by weeding 'undesirables' out of the gene pool for future generations.  The appeal to German citizens was simple;  'Do you love Germany?'  

If you answered yes, you were on the side of the state.  If you answered no, you were an enemy of Germany and to be eliminated.  However, due to the Nazi ideology, if you were saying yes to loving Germany, the Nazi ideology implied that you were also saying yes to Nazi policies.  The Nazi party would say, 'We love Germany, we want Germany to be strong.  We wish to rid Germany of those foreigners and weaklings who plot against it and those who do not serve it well.  We wish to prevent Germany from being perceived as weak internationally, and need to expand its borders in order to provide Lebensraum (translates as 'living space') for the German people.  We believe that in order to make Germany strong we should encourage our genetically strong families to raise the next generation of Germans, and prevent the gene pool from being sullied by undesirable characteristics.'

If you were somebody who claimed to love your country, but did not necessarily agree with ideas such as ethnic cleansing or the expansion of Germany's borders, you would be held up as a hypocrite who contradicted themselves.  The 'logic' of the Nazi ideology was such that if you said 'I love Germany', you were also acquiescing to the Nazi policies.  How could you claim to love Germany without agreeing that Germany needed more living space, had been betrayed by Jews and liberals within the country, or that the next generation of Germans should be good-looking and strong?

Especially with his ideas regarding the Aryan master race, Hitler was taking the scientific ideas of Darwin, and attempting to apply them across Germany.  He was the first political leader to attempt eugenics on a national scale.  His efforts to influence (and effectively 'speed up') the effects of natural selection were similar to techniques used by those who breed pedigree animals in an effort to keep particular characteristics throughout a breed.  The German people who matched the required criteria were expected to become the 'executioners' who would weed out and help destroy the undesirable German 'victims' who were weakening Germany and preventing its growth.  

Please note that there was no serious attempt to depose Hitler from within Germany, his hold on power remained absolute even when the tide of war turned against him.  Hitler had managed to fire the imagination of ordinary Germans everywhere to such an extent that they believed that by following the quasi-scientific Nazi ideology they were doing what was right.  As you can perceive, 'Do you love Germany?' was a loaded question at the time of Nazi rule.  

So, how was this state of affairs achieved?  According to Arendt, it is the seeming logicality of the ideology combined with the fear of self-contradiction that enabled the Nazi party to exert the level of control that it did  over its citizenry.  Germany was still recovering from the effects of the first world war and hyperinflation that had occurred in 1922-1923.  Liberal governments had failed to provide solutions that enabled Germany to recover to its former prosperity.  As such the German people were ready to listen to somebody with something radically new to say.  In his oratory, Hitler provided the two things that people wanted to hear.  Firstly he pointed the finger of blame.  Second, he promised strong decisive action, something that had been notably absent from the previous governments.

By absolving the ordinary German people of blame, he had the popular support necessary to implement controversial changes, thus beginning the process of turning Germany into a Totalitarian state.  Arendt believes that by holding each individual in terror of being seen as an enemy of the state, instilling in them a fear of questioning or discussing their feelings with others and isolating them away from alternative political views, the Nazi party was able to strengthen its grip to such an extent that the German political system was transformed from a weak democracy to became a totalitarian state. 

This leads to the question of why doesn't this happen more often?  Will Greece or Portugal be taken over by such a system?  The economic circumstances seem favourable for a coup of this kind.  

It is my personal belief that this form of coup is less likely (though not impossible) today.  To begin with, the lessons of Nazism and Stalinism are recounted regularly across the western world as a warning to others.  Secondly, the world is much better connected in terms of social media allowing alternative viewpoints to the state to be heard, even in countries that try to filter out external influences.  Lastly, a side-effect of globalisation is that each economy is dependent to some extent on others.  A state can no longer exist in complete isolation without inflicting considerable hardship on its citizens.