How does totalitarianism come into being? Arendt writes that this book “does not really deal with the ‘origins’ of totalitarianism – as its title unfortunately claims – but gives a historical account of the elements which crystallized into totalitarianism, this account is followed by an analysis of the elemental structure of totalitarian movements and domination itself.” Arendt also writes that her “chief quarrel with the present state of historical and political sciences is their growing incapacity for making distinctions. Terms like nationalism, imperialism, totalitarianism, etc. are used indiscriminately for all kinds of political phenomena … and none of them is any longer understood with its particular historical background. The result is a generalization in which the words themselves lose all meaning. … This kind of confusion – where everything distinct disappears and everything that is new and shocking is (not explained but) explained away either through drawing some analogies or reducing it to a previously known chain of causes and influences – seems to me the hallmark of the modern historical and political sciences.”
Is an arrow diagram an appropriate way to interpret Arendt? How would Arendt react if she knew that had been our approach to previous topics? What do you make of Arendt’s challenge? What would you say in response to defend the methods we’ve been employing? Are both approaches valid? Is one ‘better’ than the other? Thinking substantively about how totalitarianism came to be, how do the two approaches challenge (or complement) one another?
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