“The ideal subject of totalitarianism is not the Nazi or the Communist but people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction…between true and false no longer exist…. The masses’ escape from reality is a verdict against a world in which they are forced to live.” Hannah Arendt
Hannah Arendt has been described as one of the greatest Western political theorists. Being Jewish, she escaped Nazi Germany in 1933 and fled to the USA in 1941. She had already earned a PhD in philosophy at the age of 22, a woman ahead of her time. She describes the raw material of totalitarianism as a world full of loneliness, without friendship, without compassion; created by inhumane, oppressive systems. Before totalitarianism takes hold, it first ruins peoples’ relationship with themselves and others (and I might add the natural world) by making them skeptical and cynical. They no longer rely upon their own judgement, their values, their ancestral wisdom. “What makes loneliness so unbearable is the loss of one’s own self, which can only be confirmed in TRUSTING and TRUSTWORTHY company of EQUALS.” (My emphasis) She identifies how unmet needs for community and meaning create “furious individuals with nothing in common except for their contempt for the present order…….while the elite class are good at spotting hatred…using hate to whip up a mob.” When she witnessed Nazi war criminal Adolph Eichmann in a 1961 courtroom, she realized he was totally unable to to think from another’s standpoint, to have empathy for anyone but himself. She refused to see him as “inwardly” evil but rather a reflection of ‘the fearsome, word and thought-defying banality of evil.” In 1975 she wrote:” U.S politics is marketing, is P.R….Big Lies.” She claimed that totalitarianism invents outrageous sexist, racist, homophobic, simplistic lies and repeats them until desperate, cynical, hateful people fall prey to these lies.
At the Non-Violent Communication, aka, Compassionate Communication workshop over the International Womens’ day weekend, there was much talk of systemic oppression and how minorities get caught in the cross-fire of societal and political fear-mongering. The inspiring element in these kinds of gatherings is the gentle contradiction of being held in a container of safety, intimacy and vulnerability. Co-creating a caring community is on-going liberation work. Thanks to Eileen and Erin O’Brien, and all the intrepid organizers! Instead of colluding with the ramping up of recent tribal nationalism, let us trust our shared humanity, even when our strategies for meeting our needs may clash. As Martin Luther King, Jr, said: “Through violence you may murder a hater, but you cannot murder hate through violence. Darkness cannot put out darkness, only light can do that. Hate is too great a burden to bear. I have decided to love.”
