Hannah Arendt on Totalitarianism

Hannah Arendt is one of the most original and influential political thinkers and scholars of this epoch. Her work and her ideas today are as relevant as ever. She wrote about ideology, racism, totalitarianism, imperialism, terror, propaganda, and antisemitism. She is best known for concepts such as the human condition, the banality of evil, and the origins of totalitarianism. She identifies loneliness and isolation as key factors in enabling totalitarianism and for people succumbing to the rantings and ravings of demagogues. Hannah Arendt warns that, in totalitarian regimes, “people are deprived not only of their capacity to act, but also their capacity to think and to judge. And with such people you can do what you please.” Her magisterial work, The Origins of Totalitarianism, continues to be studied and read today.

Recorded at Erasmus University.