Arendt contends that when totalitarianism takes over a country, it uses indoctrination and terror rather than propaganda to maintain control. Propaganda is then aimed at foreign governments and populations or at internal elite groups that have not yet been "reliably dominated." Propaganda is thus mainly a way totalitarian regimes deal with the non-totalitarian world. Arendt notes that rather than use propaganda, totalitarian regimes rely on terror over their own subdued masses. She writes this was particularly and strikingly standard in the Nazi concentration camps, where there was no "education" (propagandizing) of inmates, only "discipline" (terror).
Totalitarian governments, she says, differ sharply from other governments in being anti-utilitarian. For example, Hitler began murdering the mentally ill at the beginning of World War II not because of any necessity to do so, but as part of his long range vision of a purified Germany that would emerge in the distant future. Totalitarian governments are more concerned with realizing their own fictions of how the world should be than living in a practical, realistic universe, as other governments do.
According the Arendt, totalitarian leaders must be seen as infallible, even if this quest leads to strange distortions of truth, such as Stalin denying Trotsky's existence.
Further, totalitarian regimes find consistency more important than visible experience. Arendt calls totalitarian organization "completely new" because its aim is to turn the previous propaganda lies and fictions the party developed while seeking power into a "functioning reality" when it gains power. Totalitarians believe they can mold reality rather than be molded by it. They believe that if they have enough power they can turn their fictions into reality.
Monday, April 23, 2012
In "The Totalitarian Movement," Hannah Arendt attempts to explain what makes totalitarianism different. Briefly discuss 4 points made in her essay which help us understand totalitarian logic and how it is applied in practice.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Why is the fact that the Americans are helping the Russians important?
In the late author Tom Clancy’s first novel, The Hunt for Red October, the assistance rendered to the Russians by the United States is impor...
-
There are a plethora of rules that Jonas and the other citizens must follow. Again, page numbers will vary given the edition of the book tha...
-
The poem contrasts the nighttime, imaginative world of a child with his daytime, prosaic world. In the first stanza, the child, on going to ...
-
The given two points of the exponential function are (2,24) and (3,144). To determine the exponential function y=ab^x plug-in the given x an...
-
The only example of simile in "The Lottery"—and a particularly weak one at that—is when Mrs. Hutchinson taps Mrs. Delacroix on the...
-
Hello! This expression is already a sum of two numbers, sin(32) and sin(54). Probably you want or express it as a product, or as an expressi...
-
Macbeth is reflecting on the Weird Sisters' prophecy and its astonishing accuracy. The witches were totally correct in predicting that M...
-
The play Duchess of Malfi is named after the character and real life historical tragic figure of Duchess of Malfi who was the regent of the ...
No comments:
Post a Comment