Extra
5 years ago in Quotes
Compared with the insane world of the concentration camp society itself, which can never be quite grasped by the imagination, because it is outside of life and death, the process by which humans get prepared and [zugerichtet] for it, is rational and purposeful. The [Anstoß], and what's more, the tacit approval of such conditions in the middle of Europe, was created by those events, which in a period of dissolving political forms suddenly had suddenly made hundreds of thousands and then millions of people homeless, stateless, rightless, economically superfluous and socially unwanted. On them it already had been demonstrated that human rights, which were never philosophically founded nor secured politically anyway, had lost even their proclamatory, their appelatory effect and were at least in their traditional form no longer applied anywhere. But these are only the negative preconditions; after all the loss of the workplace and therefore the place in society, which came with unemployment, or in the case of statelessness the loss of papers, home, a secure place to stay and a right to work, were only preliminary, summary preparation, which would have hardly sufficed for the ultimate result.
Regardless, the first crucial step on the way to totalitarian power is the killing of the juridical person, which in the case of statelessness happens automatically because the stateless person ends up outside of all law. In the case of totalitarian power this automatic killing becomes a planned murder, because concentration camps are always placed outside of the penal system, and the inmates are never to be put there "for punishable or other offenses" (also see Maunz, p. 50). Under all conditions totalitatarian power takes care to put people into the camps, which only *are* -- Jews, carriers of diseases, members of dying classes -- but have already lost their ability to act, be it for good or bad."Elemente und Ursprünge totaler Herrschaft", S. 655
1 decade ago in Quotes
From the totalitarian point of view, history is something to be created rather than learned."The Prevention of Literature" (1946)
8 years ago in Quotes
Factuality itself depends for its continued existence upon the existence of the nontotalitarian world."The Origins of Totalitarianism"
3 years ago in Quotes
We could live on a paradise planet together, with complete freedom, using high tech inventions to live anywhere with power and water.
But instead we are building a prison planet.
7 years ago in Quotes
Humans, in so far as they are more than a completion of functions able to react, whose lowest and therefore most central are the purely animal like reactions, are simply superfluous for totalitarian systems. Their goal is not to erect a despotic regime over humans, but a system by which humans are made superfluous. Total power can only be achieved and guaranteed when nothing else matters except the absolutely controllable willingness to react, marionettes robbed of all spontaneity. Humans, precisely because they are so powerful, can only be completely controlled when they have become examples of the animal like species human."Elemente und Ursprünge totaler Herrschaft" p. 667
8 years ago in Quotes
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."The Origins of Totalitarianism"
1 decade ago in Quotes
The world is not sliding, but galloping into a new transnational dystopia. This development has not been properly recognized outside of national security circles. It has been hidden by secrecy, complexity and scale. The internet, our greatest tool of emancipation, has been transformed into the most dangerous facilitator of totalitarianism we have ever seen. The internet is a threat to human civilization.
These transformations have come about silently, because those who know what is going on work in the global surveillance industry and have no incentives to speak out. Left to its own trajectory, within a few years, global civilization will be a postmodern surveillance dystopia, from which escape for all but the most skilled individuals will be impossible.
4 years ago in Quotes
Yet another circumstance must be mentioned which proves favorable for the Nazis and their immensely powerful apparatus of oppression: the development of modern technology gives the rulers, as has long been insufficiently understood, an advantage over the ruled. The more effective the weapons become and the less you can protect yourself against them, the more the armed is superior to the unarmed. The Bastille could not be successfully stormed in the age of airplanes and tear gas. Rifles equipped with rifles have no chance against motorized police forces; it makes no sense to build barricades against a government that has tanks. And in the event of a revolution, it is not only weapons development that favors those in power, the state over the individual: modern technical development and the associated sophisticated organization work in the same direction. Traffic has led to the countries becoming small and easy to monitor. How many hiding places there were in a country a hundred years ago! At that time, every power hit natural barriers! Today there is no loophole and no hideout for the rebel anymore. Even the thoughts that are able to penetrate the walls have become "controllable" because they are tied to the mass distribution of news, to radio, film and the press. How long will it take before every house has its own microphone and every private word, like every telephone call today, can be heard? The ant state is at hand. It may not be a coincidence that states like Germany and Russia have elevated technology to the status of a religion. Conversely, this development of modern technology makes the preservation of freedom a human task that is more urgent than ever."Germany: Jekyll & Hyde (1939 - Deutschland von innen betrachtet)"
7 years ago in Quotes
Tyranny is content with lawlessness; total terror replaces the fences of law and the lawfully established and orderly channels of human communication with its iron ring, which links everybody so tightly to everybody else that not only the space of freedom, as it exists in constitutional states between citizens, but even the desert of neighbourlessness and mutual suspicion disappears, so that it is as if everybody melted together into a giant being of enormous proportions. This too does the for a totalitarian environment so well prepared vernacular express in its own way when it no longer speaks of "the" Russians or "the" French, but tells us what "the" Russian or "the" Frenchman wants."Elemente und Ursprünge totaler Herrschaft" p. 682
8 years ago in Quotes
[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."The Origins of Totalitarianism"
1 decade ago in Quotes
I know the capacity that is there to make tyranny total in America, and we must see to it that this agency and all agencies that possess this technology operate within the law and under proper supervision, so that we never cross over that abyss. That is the abyss from which there is no return.
1 decade ago in Quotes
Propaganda is to a democracy what the bludgeon is to a totalitarian state.
8 years ago in Quotes
Only the mob and the elite can be attracted by the momentum of totalitarianism itself. The masses have to be won by propaganda.
5 years ago in Quotes
Since the first CHRF protest in the 31st of March, we have been closely following the situation in Hong Kong. We would like to express our deep admiration for your bravery and persistence, and our sorrow for the price you have been forced to pay. At the same time, as Mainlanders, we would like to thank you for all you have done. Thank you - you are not only fighting for the freedom of Hong Kong, you are fighting for ours as well.
The Communists have been in power for 70 years. In these 70 years, the passion and bravery of the Chinese people has been slowly and inexorably worn down to nothing. When the people stay silent in the face of oppression, there can be no freedom. As Mainlanders, we cannot see hope, nor can we even express the deep rage and pain we feel. But your appearance has given us hope, a shining light of freedom in this dark land. You have shown us the true meaning of bravery, righteousness, and civil disobedience. You did not bow in the face of violent oppression.
30 years ago, when Beijing was thrown into a crisis, it was you who gave us the strongest support; 30 years later, when you needed ours the most, what you got was the misunderstanding and mocking words of the Chinese. As citizens, we feel ashamed. However, we want to let you know that there still is a group of Chinese who support you. We too dream of one day living in a just, free, and democratic society. We also dream that the light of modern civilization will one day shine on every Chinese.
Unfortunately, as citizens of the Mainland, we cannot stand with you in your fight for freedom. We dare not even say our names. Forgive us for our cowardice, but we want you to know you are not alone. We stand behind you.
Be careful. When there is life, there is hope.
8 years ago in Quotes
The concentration camps, by making death itself anonymous (making it impossible to find out whether a prisoner is dead or alive), robbed death of its meaning as the end of a fulfilled life. In a sense they took away the individual’s own death, proving that henceforth nothing belonged to him and he belonged to no one. His death merely set a seal on the fact that he had never existed."The Origins of Totalitarianism"
8 years ago in Quotes
Now the police dreams that one look at the gigantic map on the office wall should suffice at any given moment to establish who is related to whom and in what degree of intimacy; and, theoretically, this dream is not unrealizable although its technical execution is bound to be somewhat difficult. If this map really did exist, not even memory would stand in the way of the totalitarian claim to domination; such a map might make it possible to obliterate people without any traces, as if they had never existed at all."The Origins of Totalitarianism"
1 decade ago in Quotes
They couldn't before because public would be sensitive. Now with checkpoints everywhere, NSA spying, cavity searches, homeless people beaten down to death by cops getting away with it, DOJ declining to investigate bank scandals, IRS, Benghazi, Fast and Furious, they do not need logos with pink teddy bears and stills of a happy family holding hands with smiling children on the beach. The majority of public IS already got used to this tyranny. Coming forward with less PR is a next, obvious and logical step. After that: huge military boot on your face!
8 years ago in Quotes
The aim of totalitarian education has never been to instill convictions but to destroy the capacity to form any.
1 decade ago in Quotes
I’m surprised how indifferent so many feel about the US surveillance scandal. Look up Germany’s history. I have spoken to people who lived in Nazi and Eastern Socialist Germany - the spying on your life by the State is one thing, but what it does to your friends and family in the long run is beyond anything you can imagine right now. You lose trust in people you love, every conversation becomes half lie/ half truth. It becomes part of EVERYBODY’s lives. Nobody is an exception. Ignore music, games or whatever you do right now and research the topic.
7 years ago in Quotes
We don't know a perfected totalitarian power structure, because it would require the control of the whole planet. But we know enough about the the still preliminary experiments of total organization to realize that the very well possible perfection of this apparatus would get rid of human agency in the sense as we know it. To act would turn out to be superfluous for people living together, when all people have become an example of their species, when all doing has become an acceleration of the movement mechanism of history or nature following a set pattern, and all deeds have become the execution of death sentences which history and nature have given anyway."Elemente und Ursprünge totaler Herrschaft" p. 683