Hannah Arendt, a German-Jewish political theorist who fled Nazism, provided one of the 20th century's most chilling and insightful analyses of totalitarian regimes in her seminal work, The Origins of Totalitarianism. She dissected the mechanisms of Nazi Germany and Stalinist Russia, identifying key elements that allowed such regimes to seize and maintain absolute power. But Arendt's work is far from a mere historical artifact. Her warnings about the erosion of human freedom, the dangers of ideology, the power of isolation, and the nature of evil resonate with disturbing clarity in our technologically saturated 21st century. Could the tyrannies she described be taking new, more subtle forms today?
There is also a strong critique of capitalism as a force that breaks ties to other social bonds (community, church, etc.) in Arendt’s work. That’s missing here and it’s totally relevant.
“Large, complex bureaucracies, both governmental and corporate, can diffuse responsibility to the point where no single individual feels accountable for harmful outcomes.”
This is how you get Health Insurance CEOs being seemingly oblivious to the destruction of lives resulting from their conscious policy decisions. At least until they get shot
There is also a strong critique of capitalism as a force that breaks ties to other social bonds (community, church, etc.) in Arendt’s work. That’s missing here and it’s totally relevant.
It will be fun to transpose Arendt’s ideas into the present (she’s always actual)👌
https://scholarstudy.substack.com/p/welcome-to-the-new-england-scholars?r=28woco
This is not Josep Goebbels, the nazi, but Joseph Gerber, of child food purveyor
https://open.substack.com/pub/clementpaulus/p/recursive-tension-as-method?r=5c1ys6&utm_medium=ios
“Large, complex bureaucracies, both governmental and corporate, can diffuse responsibility to the point where no single individual feels accountable for harmful outcomes.”
This is how you get Health Insurance CEOs being seemingly oblivious to the destruction of lives resulting from their conscious policy decisions. At least until they get shot