Hannah Arendt Totalitarianism

In the 20th century totalitarian governments had come to power in Italy, Germany, and the Soviet Union. These governments had forced their political authority and centralized control over all aspects of life (Document 3 and 6). The government had imposed public gatherings to invade people’s lives and indoctrination of totalitarian ideas had influenced youth organizations and literature to help the government gain authority over one’s country (Document 2). One method used by totalitarian dictatorship is having mass rallies and speeches. The totalitarian government that used these method leaders was Benito Mussolini of Italy and Adolf Hitler of Germany.

Throughout history totalitarian leaders would violate people’s safety, their peace of mind and their freedom to rise to power. For example, Germany lost the war in 1919 which cause the need for reparations and a new leader, that is when Hitler became the leader of Germany and in that time Germany was going through a lot of hard times which caused the people to look forward to the future. Another example of totalitarian leaders in that time was Stalin who used people’s fear to gain trust from his people and cause paranoia in people of that time. Both of these totalitarian leaders violated democratic ideas by violating the safety and freedom of their people to manipulate them and their minds. And then they would oppress the minority group, for example, those who were Jewish were treated badly and killed.

In her excerpt "Ideology and Terror: A Novel Form of Government" from her book The Origins of Totalitarianism, Hannah Arendt reveals that terror is at the core of a totalitarian government, and that this terror is based upon ideology. This type of terror exceeds fear. Totalitarianism dominated many governments during the twentieth century. Unlike other forms of government that oppress its people; a totalitarian form of government escapes the boundaries of definition. A totalitarian government is commonly mistaken as a tyranny or dictatorship. Arendt explains that this is because it must begin as a tyranny to lift the boundaries of the laws. Arendt uses two particular governments as examples to help clarify the nature of a

A common misconception about the Holocaust is that the world was naïve of the atrocities happening under the Nazi’s rule. The horrors of the Holocaust were not left undocumented. Unfortunately, many saw these malicious acts as insignificant to the global population; people only start sympathizing when the hindrance affects them. Hitler, with the help of his many allies, achieved to murder millions of innocent men, women, and children. After spending this semester studying the Holocaust, I have realized that the Nazis’ greatest ally was neither an individual nor a country; Hitler’s greatest ally was indifference.

Thesis: A key concept to understanding Hannah Arendt’s “Total Domination” is the essence of terror and the importance of concentration camps in maintaining the Nazi totalitarian state.

The 20th century was marked by many unforgettable events such as World War I, World War II, and the Cold War. Some of these events occurred because of the birth of a government system called totalitarianism. A totalitarian regime is gained either through legal or illegal means and transforms the entire society into a single party regime with the sole purpose of conquering society (Zani, 2003). One of the founding fathers of totalitarianism, Joseph Stalin, ruined the lives of many by taking complete control over their lives through brainwashing techniques and destroying their rights to express their opinion.

The struggle against a totalitarian government is unsurprisingly a frequent theme in dystopian literature. Almost by definition the genre is set in a futuristic society characterized by extreme oppression and despondence. Malevolent autocrats at the helms of totalitarian governments have, throughout our history, been responsible for innumerable travesties. This young century alone has witnessed the evil of Bashar al-Assad, Omar Bashir, and Saddam Hussein. Probing only slightly deeper into our collective memory, we are acquainted with the reigns of Idi Amin, Pol Pot, Mao Zedong, Josef Stalin, Hideki Tojo, Francisco Franco, and (of course) Adolf Hitler. The last hundred years have undeniably been bloody, and it is therefore only natural that

Benjamin Madley’s article “From Africa to Auschwitz: How German South West Africa Incubated Ideas and Methods Adopted and Developed by the Nazis in Eastern Europe," is one of the most referenced on this topic. Madley is an American historian who also focuses on genocide in world history and is significantly influenced by the writings of Zimmerer and Moses. By building off these scholars, he attempts to further establish the Second Reich in Namibia as an essential precursor to the Holocaust. He expands on Zimmerer arguments by adding the connection of psychical people as a transferer of ideologies to the Nazi regime and the idea of lebensraum or living space. He begins by references back to Arendt's claim of European colonialism leading to genocide, and

The Holocaust is the undisputed genocide of all genocides, and it has been contended energetically by numerous students of history that no other dim period in mankind's history very thinks about to it. Albeit subjectively valid in a few perspectives, current students of history no longer need to depend on shades of obscurity keeping in mind the end goal to break down genocide.

Totalitarianism is the most radical denial of freedom. It describes a society with no rights and no control over one’s own thoughts or actions. According to the Online Oxford Dictionaries, totalitarianism is, “a system of government that is centralized and dictatorial and requires complete subservience to the state” (https://en.oxforddictionaries.com). In other words, totalitarianism is a society controlled by a government, composed of a limited amount of people, with complete control over the population. Throughout Fahrenheit 451, Ray Bradbury entails of a society controlled by a totalitarian government, providing insight on how its mechanics function. Bradbury, a renowned writer especially for his visions of the future expressed

Totalitarianism is defined as a political system of government in which those in power have complete control and do not allow people to oppose them. Those in power are a single party dictatorship in which one party controls state, and all other parties are forbidden. Other important features that distinguish or help define totalitarianism include restricted or eliminated constitutional rights, state terrorism, and totalitarian rulers are known as ideological dictators. The government of Oceania, in the novel 1984, is an example of totalitarian society. Germany, under Adolf Hitler’s National Socialism is another example of totalitarianism. Orwell’s Oceania has both similarities and differences to the totalitarian states of the twentieth

Good people can cause severe harm if their motives are influenced by the values shared in a public corporation or are a result of manipulation controlled by the law. Bob Henderson’s ability to satisfy his interests to obtain success by dismissing social responsibility and contributing to the rise in obesity is wrong. Hannah Arendt founded the theory “The banality evil’ through analyzing Adolf Eichmann’s case during the time of the Holocaust. Eichmann and Henderson share similarities of both being ordinary men who influenced large scale harm. The intent of this essay will be to compare and contrast the perception of evil and discuss at which point radical evil may be mistaken for banal evil.

The governments in today’s society have brainwashed their citizens into believing everything their leader says and thinks is correct and everything else is wrong. This can sometimes be known as a totalitarian government. George Orwell’s novel 1984 revolves around totalitarianism. The members of the party in Oceania are taught and required to worship their leader Big Brother whether they believe in him or not. In the novel 1984, George Orwell shows the problems and the hatred with a totalitarian government through his use of symbolism, situational irony, and indirect characterization.

Many people have sought to evaluate the vulnerabilities associated with states and markets that are under totalitarianism, which is a political system in which the state holds total authority over the society. First developed in 1920 by the Italian fascists, and in particular Benito Mussolini, who ruled Italy for over twenty years, totalitarianism embossed the minds of those who lived under it. This system was conceptualized mainly to highlight the similarities between Nazi Germany and other fascist states. There’s one underlying difference that one must understand for one to assess the restrictions that totalitarianism puts on one’s liberty. One should realize that totalitarianism states are states where there is a single party rule, where a dictatorship is type of government in which a single person rules. Aldous Huxley and George Orwell are famous authors who opposed totalitarianism, and through their philosophical ideals, attempted to inform people of the dangers faced by society under this restricting system, where people are inhibited from holding any sort of authority. George Orwell, in 1984, discusses concerns relating to big government and big brother and Aldous Huxley, in Brave New World, discusses predatory markets impinging on our personal freedoms. Through their works, they attempt to question societal beliefs on brute force and physical coercion verses the manipulation of preferences and tastes leading to willing submission. George Orwell and Aldous Huxley each

In her classic work The Origins of Totalitarianism, Hannah Arendt articulates a vision of totalitarianism that is juxtaposed against her own conceptions of freedom and the purpose of humanity. In this contrasting however, she ignores her own recognition that the meanings of such concepts are intimately tied with the narrative of a given society or group. As a result, this essay will argue that Arendt’s claim that totalitarianism destroys freedom as a living political reality is unjustified, and that instead totalitarianism gives a meaning to freedom that is informed by the collapse of ultimate concepts such as the law of History and the law of Nature into the sphere of man. To show this, we will explore the way Arendt lays the seeds of the