Extra   author: Hannah Arendt   page 4

Die Kunst des totalitären Führers besteht darin, in der erfahrbaren Realität geeignete Elemente für seine Fiktion herauszufinden und sie so zu verwenden, daß sie fortan von aller überprüfbaren Erfahrung getrennt bleiben. Dies geschieht dadurch, daß man Erfahrungselemente isoliert und verallgemeinert, also sie dem Bereich der Urteilskraft, die ihnen ihren Platz in der Welt angewiesen hatte, entzieht, um dann so vom gesunden Menschenverstand unabhängig gewordene, aus ihrem allgemeinen Zusammenhang gerissene Erfahrung in das ihr logisch inhärente Extrem zu treiben. Dadurch wird eine Konsequenz und Stimmigkeit erreicht, mit der die wirkliche Welt und die nicht verabsolutierte Erfahrung nie und nimmer in Konkurrenz treten können. Die Organisation der totalitären Bewegung entspricht aufs genaueste dieser in der Propaganda erreichten Stimmigkeit einer fiktiven Welt. In ihr vermag die Bewegung die Aufdeckung aller spezifischen Lügen überleben, weil die Konsequenz der Fiktion als solche eine "höhere Wahrheit" zu repräsentieren scheint.

Hannah Arendt

"Elemente und Ursprünge totaler Herrschaft", S. 536

Die Organisation eines ganzen Volkes für den Zweck der Welteroberung nach dem Modell der "Weisen von Zion" faßten die Nazis in dem Begriff der Volksgemeinschaft propagandistisch zusammen. Die Volksgemeinschaft sollte auf der absoluten Gleichheit aller Deutschen, ihrer identischen, natürlich-physischen Überlegenheit über alle anderen Völker einerseits und auf ihrer absoluten Feindschaft gegen das jüdische Volk andererseits gründen. Nach der Machtübernahme verlor dieser Begriff etwas an propagandistischer Bedeutung, weil die Nazis es nicht mehr für nötig hielten, ihre Verachtung des deuschen Volkes (wie aller Völker als Völker) zu verbergen, und weil sie, in konsequenter Verfolgung ihrer Rasseideologie, mehr und mehr versuchten, die Reihen der Bewegung und vor allem der Elitegruppen den "Ariern" anderer Völker zu öffnen. Die Volksgemeinschaft war nur eine propagandistische Vorbereitung auf eine arische Rassegesellschaft, die schließlich allen Völkern, auch dem deutschen, den Garaus gemacht hätte. [Ende der Fußnote zu vorherigem Absatz:] Genau dies meinte auch Himmler, wenn er sagte: "Der Führer denkt nicht deutsch, er denkt germanisch." [..] Nur daß Hitler, wie wir aus den *Tischgesprächen* andeutungsweise erfahren, sich um diese Zeit bereits über das germanische "Geschrei" lustig machte und "arisch dachte".

Die Propaganda der Nazis von der Machtergreifung benutzte die Volksgemeinschaft vor allem als Antwort auf die klassenlose Gesellschaft kommunistischer Propaganda, und gerade in dieser Hinsicht bewährte sich die Volksgemeinschaft vorzüglich. Das Element einer nichtideologischen, revolutionären Gerechtigkeit war in dem Begriff der klassenlosen Gesellschaft noch so lebendig, daß sie propagandistisch in dem Konkurrenzkampf mit der Volksgemeinschaft bald den kürzeren zog. Was die Massen hörten und was der Mob vor ihnen gehört hatte, war nur, daß die Einebnung aller sozialen und aller Eigentumsunterschiede in der klassenlosen Gesellschaft offensichtlich so vonstatten gehen würde, daß jeder auf den Stand eines gelernten Arbeiters gebracht werden sollte, während die Volksgemeinschaft mit ihren Assoziationen von Weltverschwörung und Welteroberung hoffen ließ, daß jeder Deutsche schließlich und endlich als Fabrikarbeiter enden würde. [..] Für die Bewegung war von großer Bedeutung, daß im Unterschiede zu der klassenlosen Gesellschaft, deren Realisierung von objektiven Bedingungen außerhalb der Bewegung abhing, die Volksgemeinschaft als eine "geschworene Sippengemeinschaft" [in der Formulierung der SS. Siehe Gunter d´Alquen, Die SS, 1939], geeint durch den Kampf gegen den angeblichen Hauptfeind, den Juden, sofort innerhalb der Bewegung realisiert werden konnte, und zwar durch die Einebnung aller sozialen Unterschiede einerseits und durch den von allen geforderten Judenhaß andererseits. Volksgemeinschaft wurde damit der Name für die fiktive Welt der Bewegung selbst.

Hannah Arendt

"Elemente und Ursprünge totaler Herrschaft", S. 534

So läuft der Unterschied zwischen traditionellen und modernen Lügen im Grunde auf den Unterschied zwischen Verbergen und Vernichten hinaus.

Hannah Arendt

"Wahrheit und Politik"

Eine Welt, die Platz für die Öffentlichkeit haben soll, kann nicht nur für eine Generation errichtet oder nur für die Lebenden geplant sein; sie muss die Lebensspanne sterblicher Menschen übersteigen.

Hannah Arendt

"Vita Activa"

Since Hobbes was a philosopher, he could already detect in the rise of the bourgeoisie all those antitraditionalist qualities of the new class which would take more than three hundred years to develop fully. His Leviathan was not concerned with idle speculation about new political principles or the old search for reason as it governs the community of men; it was strictly a "reckoning of the consequences" that follow from the rise of a new class in society whose existence is essentially tied up with property as a dynamic, new property-producing device. The so-called accumulation of capital which gave birth to the bourgeoisie changed the very conception of property and wealth: they were no longer considered to be the results of accumulation and acquisition but their beginnings; wealth became a never-ending process of getting wealthier. The classification of the bourgeoisie as an owning class is only superficially correct, for a characteristic of this class has been that everybody could belong to it who conceived of life as a process of perpetually becoming wealthier, and considered money as something sacrosanct which under no circumstances should be a mere commodity for consumption.

Property by itself, however, is subject to use and consumption and therefore diminishes constantly. The most radical and the only secure form of possession is destruction, for only what we have destroyed is safely and forever ours. Property owners who do not consume but strive to enlarge their holdings continually find one very inconvenient limitation, the unfortunate fact that men must die. Death is the real reason why property and acquisition can never become a true political principle. A social system based essentially on property cannot possibly proceed toward anything but the final destruction of all property. The finiteness of personal life is as serious a challenge to property as the foundation of society, as the limits of the globe are a challenge to expansion as the foundation of the body politic. By transcending the limits of human life in planning for an automatic continuous growth of wealth beyond all personal needs and possibilities of consumption, individual property is made a public affair and taken out of the sphere of mere private life. Private interests which by their very nature are temporary, limited by man's natural span of life, can now escape into the sphere of public affairs and borrow from them that infinite length of time which is needed for continuous accumulation. This seems to create a society very similar to that of the ants and bees where "the Common good differeth not from the Private; and being by nature enclined to their private, they procure thereby the common benefit."

Since, however, men are neither ants nor bees, the whole thing is a delusion. Public life takes on the deceptive aspect of a total of private interests as though these interests could create a new quality through sheer addition. All the so-called liberal concepts of politics (that is, all the pre-imperialist political notions of the bourgeoisie)-such as unlimited competition regulated by a secret balance which comes mysteriously from the sum total of competing activities, the pursuit of "enlightened self-interest" as an adequate political virtue, unlimited progress inherent in the mere succession of events -have this in common: they simply add up private lives and personal behavior patterns and present the sum as laws of history, or economics, or politics. Liberal concepts, however, while they express the bourgeoisie's instinctive distrust of and its innate hostility to public affairs, are only a temporary compromise between the old standards of Western culture and the new class's faith in property as a dynamic, self-moving principle. The old standards give way to the extent that automatically growing wealth actually replaces political action.

Hobbes was the true, though never fully recognized, philosopher of the bourgeoisie because he realized that acquisition of wealth conceived as a never-ending process can be guaranteed only by the seizure of political power, for the accumulating process must sooner or later force open all existing territorial limits. He foresaw that a society which had entered the path of never-ending acquisition had to engineer a dynamic political organization capable of a corresponding never-ending process of power generation. He even, through sheer force of imagination, was able to outline the main psychological traits of the new type of man who would fit into such a society and its tyrannical body politic. He foresaw the necessary idolatry of power itself by this new human type, that he would be flattered at being called a power-thirsty animal, although actually society would force him to surrender all his natural forces, his virtues and his vices, and would make him the poor meek little fellow who has not even the right to rise against tyranny, and who, far from striving for power, submits to any existing government and does not stir even when his best friend falls an innocent victim to an incomprehensible raison d'etat.

For a Commonwealth based on the accumulated and monopolized power of all its individual members necessarily leaves each person powerless, deprived of his natural and human capacities. It leaves him degraded into a cog in the power-accumulating machine, free to console himself with sublime thoughts about the ultimate destiny of this machine, which itself is constructed in such a way that it can devour the globe simply by following its own inherent law.

The ultimate destructive purpose of this Commonwealth is at least indicated in the philosophical interpretation of human equality as an "equality of ability" to kill. Living with all other nations "in the condition of a perpetual war, and upon the confines of battle, with their frontiers armed. and canons planted against their neighbors round about," it has no other law of conduct but the "most conducing to [its] benefit" and will gradually devour weaker structures until it comes to a last war "which provideth for every man, by Victory, or Death.

By "Victory or Death," the Leviathan can indeed overcome all political limitations that go with the existence of other peoples and can envelop the whole earth in its tyranny. But when the last war has come and every man has been provided for, no ultimate peace is established on earth: the power-accumulating machine, without which continual expansion would not have been achieved, needs more material to devour in its never-ending process. If the last victorious Commonwealth cannot proceed to "annex the planets," it can only proceed to destroy itself in order to begin anew the never-ending process of power generation.

Hannah Arendt

"The Origins of Totalitarianism"

Behind the blind bestiality of the SA, there often lay a deep hatred and resentment against all those who were socially, intellectually, or physically better off than themselves, and who now, as if in fulfillment of their wildest dreams, were in their power. This resentment, which never died out entirely in the camps, strikes us as a last remnant of humanly understandable feeling. The real horror began, however, when the SS took over the administration of the camps. The old spontaneous bestiality gave way to an absolutely cold and systematic destruction of human bodies, calculated to destroy human dignity; death was avoided or postponed indefinitely. The camps were no longer amusement parks for beasts in human form, that is, for men who really belonged in mental institutions and prisons; the reverse became true: they were turned into "drill grounds," on which perfectly normal men were trained to be full-fledged members of the SS.

Hannah Arendt

"The Origins of Totalitarianism"

Until now the totalitarian belief that everything is possible seems to have proved only that everything can be destroyed. Yet, in their effort to prove that everything is possible, totalitarian regimes have discovered without knowing it that there are crimes which men can neither punish nor forgive. When the impossible was made possible it became the unpunishable, unforgivable absolute evil which could no longer be understood by the evil motives of self-interest, greed, covetousness, resentment, lust for power, and cowardice; and which therefore anger could not revenge, love could not endure, friendship could not forgive. Just as the victims in the death factories or the holes of oblivion are no longer "human" in the eyes of their executioners, so this newest species of criminals is beyond the pale even of solidarity in human sinfulness.

It is inherent in our entire philosophical tradition that we cannot conceive of a "radical evil." And this is true both for Christian theology, which conceded even to the Devil himself a celestial origin, as well as for Kant, the only philosopher who, in the word he coined for it, at least must have suspected the existence of this evil even though he immediately rationalized it in the concept of a "perverted ill will" that could be explained by comprehensible motives. Therefore, we actually have nothing to fall back on in order to understand a phenomenon that nevertheless confronts us with its overpowering reality and breaks down all the standards we know. There is only one thing that seems to be discernible: we may say that radical evil has emerged in connection with a system in which all men have become equally superfluous.

Hannah Arendt

"The Origins of Totalitarianism"

Imperialism was born when the ruling class in capitalist production came up against national limitations to its economic expansion. The bourgeoisie turned to politics out of economic necessity; for if it did not want to give up the capitalist system whose inherent law is constant economic growth, it had to impose this law upon its home governments and to proclaim expansion to be an ultimate political goal of foreign policy.

Hannah Arendt

"The Origins of Totalitarianism"

Since the end of human action, as distinct from the end products of fabrication, can never be reliably predicted, the means used to achieve political goals are more often than not of greater relevance to the future world than the intended goals.

Hannah Arendt

The only possible metaphor one may conceive of for the life of the mind is the sensation of being alive. Without the breath of life, the human body is a corpse; without thinking, the human mind is dead.

Hannah Arendt

Never has our future been more unpredictable, never have we depended so much on political forces that cannot be trusted to follow the rules of common sense and self-interest—forces that look like sheer insanity, if judged by the standards of other centuries.

Hannah Arendt

"The Origins of Totalitarianism"

The antisemites who called themselves patriots introduced that new species of national feeling which consists primarily in a complete whitewash of one's own people and a sweeping condemnation of all others.

Hannah Arendt

"The Origins of Totalitarianism"

Under the most diverse conditions and disparate circumstances, we watch the development of the same phenomena—homelessness on an unprecedented scale, rootlessness to an unprecedented depth.

Hannah Arendt

"The Origins of Totalitarianism"

[The method of infallible prediction] is foolproof only after the movements have seized power. Then all debate about the truth or falsity of a totalitarian dictator’s prediction is as weird as arguing with a potential murderer about whether his future victim is dead or alive – since by killing the person in question the murderer can promptly provide proof of the correctness of his statement. The only valid argument under such conditions is promptly to rescue the person whose death is predicted. Before mass leaders seize the power to fit reality to their lies, their propaganda is marked by its extreme contempt for facts as such, for in their opinion fact depends entirely on the power of man who can fabricate it. The assertion that the Moscow subway is the only one in the world is a lie only so long as the Bolsheviks have not the power to destroy all the others. In other words, the method of infallible prediction, more than any other totalitarian propaganda device, betrays its ultimate goal of world conquest, since only in a world completely under his control could the totalitarian ruler possibly realize all his lies and make true all his prophecies.

Hannah Arendt

"The Origins of Totalitarianism"

Since no one is capable of forming his own opinion without the benefit of a multitude of opinions held by others, the rule of public opinion endangers even the opinion of those few who may have the strength not to share it. This is one of the reasons for the curiously sterile negativism of all opinions which oppose a popularly acclaimed tyranny. [...] public opinion, by virtue of its unanimity, provokes a unanimous opposition and thus kills true opinions everywhere.

Hannah Arendt

It is in the very nature of things human that every act that has once made its appearance and has been recorded in the history of mankind stays with mankind as a potentiality long after its actuality has become a thing of the past. No punishment has ever possessed enough power of deterrence to prevent the commission of crimes.

Hannah Arendt

"Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil"

Nothing perhaps illustrates the general disintegration of political life better than this vague, pervasive hatred of everybody and everything, without a focus for its passionate attention, with nobody to make responsible for the state of affairs — neither the government nor the bourgeoisie nor an outside power. It consequently turned in all directions, haphazardly and unpredictably, incapable of assuming an air of healthy indifference toward anything under the sun.

Hannah Arendt

"The Origins of Totalitarianism"

To them, violence, power, cruelty, were the supreme capacities of men who had definitely lost their place in the universe and were much too proud to long for a power theory that would safely bring them back and reintegrate them into the world. They were satisfied with blind partisanship in anything that respectable society had banned, regardless of theory or content, and they elevated cruelty to a major virtue because it contradicted society’s humanitarian and liberal hypocrisy.

Hannah Arendt

"The Origins of Totalitarianism"

The outstanding negative quality of the totalitarian elite is that it never stops to think about the world as it really is and never compares the lies with reality.

Hannah Arendt

"The Origins of Totalitarianism"

Factuality itself depends for its continued existence upon the existence of the nontotalitarian world.

Hannah Arendt

"The Origins of Totalitarianism"