2 ms·

It is arguably as much a work on Stalinism as it is about the Nazis.

by marginalia_nu 4y ago

lapcat 4y ago
Arendt was a Jewish Holocaust survivor and wrote extensively on Nazism.
- marginalia_nu 4y ago
  The point of her work isn't to explain why the Nazis are bad. It's a discussion about the political mechanics of the new 20th century political systems, and how they differ from tyranny. It's a fairly nuanced and insightful discussion. She holds Stalinism as the most complete example of totalitarianism, in front of the Nazis, and especially the Italian fascists who she merely considers has totalitarian tendencies.
  - lapcat 4y ago
    > The point of her work isn't to explain why the Nazis are bad. I didn't say it was. But whether the comparison is Hitler or Stalin, it's absurd, because both cases involved mass murder, and nothing even remotely comparable is happening with social media.
    - meany 4y ago
      I don’t think the original poster was implying it was comparable to the out comes of Stalin and hitler. Rather that the mechanisms and patterns used to establish control over the political party the leader ran have similar characteristics.
    - marginalia_nu 4y ago
      Right, but that is not the comparison I'm making either. It's possible to say a ball is round like a melon, even if the ball does not share the color or pattern or size. The similarity I'm noting is the erasure of the private life, the arbitrarily shifting rules of what is acceptable, the relentless witch hunts, the irrelevance of guilt and truth, the fear that you might be next. Which is, to Arendt, some of the defining hallmarks of totalitarianism.
      - lapcat 4y ago
        > It's sort of unsettling how this twitter "mob violence" echoes the patterns laid out by Hannah Arendt's exploration of totalitarianism. Except that tweets are nonviolent, whereas totalitarianism is extremely violent. If you wanted to make a subtler point, you started off on the wrong foot. Your original comment felt over the top to me.
        marginalia_nu 4y ago
        I don't think that distinction really matters, twitter dog-piling can arguably be considered an anologous form of political mob violence.
        lapcat 4y ago
        > twitter dog-piling can arguably be considered an anologous form of political mob violence. I would argue with that. :-) In general, the rhetoric over "cancel culture" feels very over the top to me. There's a level of fearmongering and victimhood that's not warranted by the empirical facts, much like whenever it's claimed that there's a "crime wave". I'm not saying there's no crime, or no cancellation, just that I don't see totalitarianism as a natural next step from Twitter.
      - orwin 4y ago
        This is not what i took from her. Yes, the erasure of private life (i don't see how this is relevant in this case, but OK, i'll give you this point), but the rest isn't a primary factor. Also, like Popper, Arendt do not have the historical research we now have access to, which makes her theories incomplete at best (and they both are part of the reason historical research made leaps and bonds in the last 40 years, as they were non-marxists philosophers giving credit to critical work) The myth of Fascism (that she called totalitarism, but in this case it's the same, the roots are bonapartism) is "Our group is the best, and everybody should aim to be like us (Poles, French, Dalmatians, but also anarchists if we're talking about USSR... Depends on the flavor). But we aren't at the place we deserve because those other groups infiltrated us and we have traitors working agaisnt us (historically Jews, but also anybody "weakening" your group, like trans and handicaped people in Nazi germany, or pacifists in 1914). We need to get rid of the traitors and we will be as strong as we deserve." Yes, the society is becoming more fascist (or totalitarist if you want to use Arendt terms), but there is one reason to not be down: they are stupider than they were in 1920s. "Neofascists" are basic protofascists at best, with no real ideals, barely adopted the "great replacement" theory which is at best a rehashing of a 1900 theory. They did not read Nietszche but the Bible, and now seems to base their ideals in religion, which in my opinion, made them weaker.

It is arguably as much a work on Stalinism as it is about the Nazis.

lapcat 4y ago

Arendt was a Jewish Holocaust survivor and wrote extensively on Nazism.

marginalia_nu 4y ago
The point of her work isn't to explain why the Nazis are bad. It's a discussion about the political mechanics of the new 20th century political systems, and how they differ from tyranny. It's a fairly nuanced and insightful discussion. She holds Stalinism as the most complete example of totalitarianism, in front of the Nazis, and especially the Italian fascists who she merely considers has totalitarian tendencies.
- lapcat 4y ago
  > The point of her work isn't to explain why the Nazis are bad. I didn't say it was. But whether the comparison is Hitler or Stalin, it's absurd, because both cases involved mass murder, and nothing even remotely comparable is happening with social media.
  - meany 4y ago
    I don’t think the original poster was implying it was comparable to the out comes of Stalin and hitler. Rather that the mechanisms and patterns used to establish control over the political party the leader ran have similar characteristics.
  - marginalia_nu 4y ago
    Right, but that is not the comparison I'm making either. It's possible to say a ball is round like a melon, even if the ball does not share the color or pattern or size. The similarity I'm noting is the erasure of the private life, the arbitrarily shifting rules of what is acceptable, the relentless witch hunts, the irrelevance of guilt and truth, the fear that you might be next. Which is, to Arendt, some of the defining hallmarks of totalitarianism.
    - lapcat 4y ago
      > It's sort of unsettling how this twitter "mob violence" echoes the patterns laid out by Hannah Arendt's exploration of totalitarianism. Except that tweets are nonviolent, whereas totalitarianism is extremely violent. If you wanted to make a subtler point, you started off on the wrong foot. Your original comment felt over the top to me.
      - marginalia_nu 4y ago
        I don't think that distinction really matters, twitter dog-piling can arguably be considered an anologous form of political mob violence.
        lapcat 4y ago
        > twitter dog-piling can arguably be considered an anologous form of political mob violence. I would argue with that. :-) In general, the rhetoric over "cancel culture" feels very over the top to me. There's a level of fearmongering and victimhood that's not warranted by the empirical facts, much like whenever it's claimed that there's a "crime wave". I'm not saying there's no crime, or no cancellation, just that I don't see totalitarianism as a natural next step from Twitter.
    - orwin 4y ago
      This is not what i took from her. Yes, the erasure of private life (i don't see how this is relevant in this case, but OK, i'll give you this point), but the rest isn't a primary factor. Also, like Popper, Arendt do not have the historical research we now have access to, which makes her theories incomplete at best (and they both are part of the reason historical research made leaps and bonds in the last 40 years, as they were non-marxists philosophers giving credit to critical work) The myth of Fascism (that she called totalitarism, but in this case it's the same, the roots are bonapartism) is "Our group is the best, and everybody should aim to be like us (Poles, French, Dalmatians, but also anarchists if we're talking about USSR... Depends on the flavor). But we aren't at the place we deserve because those other groups infiltrated us and we have traitors working agaisnt us (historically Jews, but also anybody "weakening" your group, like trans and handicaped people in Nazi germany, or pacifists in 1914). We need to get rid of the traitors and we will be as strong as we deserve." Yes, the society is becoming more fascist (or totalitarist if you want to use Arendt terms), but there is one reason to not be down: they are stupider than they were in 1920s. "Neofascists" are basic protofascists at best, with no real ideals, barely adopted the "great replacement" theory which is at best a rehashing of a 1900 theory. They did not read Nietszche but the Bible, and now seems to base their ideals in religion, which in my opinion, made them weaker.