[HN Gopher] For Hannah Arendt, totalitarianism is rooted in lone...
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For Hannah Arendt, totalitarianism is rooted in loneliness
Author : ALee
Score : 124 points
Date : 2021-01-20 14:51 UTC (8 hours ago)
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(TXT) w3m dump (aeon.co)
| billfruit wrote:
| Didn't Rebecca West also write about Authoritarianism about the
| same time as Arendt did? How did they view the topic differently?
| hexxiiiz wrote:
| "But in order to make individuals susceptible to ideology, you
| must first ruin their relationship to themselves and others by
| making them sceptical and cynical, so that they can no longer
| rely upon their own judgment"
|
| As much as I am sure this does happen quite a lot, something that
| does not get enough emphasis is how much people's relationships
| to themselves erode under the very ordinary conditions of
| quotidian life with its stresses, indignities, and
| disappointments. Nothing so deliberate as a propaganda campaign
| is needed for this first step to already take hold of people
| through the subtle misery of their personal relationships. This
| is not to say that institutions and ideologies are not involved
| with this process, but I think the unconscious subtleties of this
| all too easily get overlooked when we culturally take a normative
| view of what it means to be mentally healthy as successfully
| living a normal life.
|
| Arendt, in the same book, also argued that personal resentments
| fueled the rise of fascist regimes. I think in general, if, as a
| society, we want to curtail the rise of totalitarian politics, we
| have to really address the very personal individual antagonisms
| that arise in people's everyday lives; loneliness among them, but
| not alone as the sole culprit by a longshot.
| [deleted]
| motohagiography wrote:
| I'm over-commenting on this thread, but this is a pet topic of
| mine. A controversial observation of hers was that both fascism
| and communism were mere national movements, limited to their
| nation states, where what distinguished totalitarianism as a
| new form itself was using those nations as stepping stones and
| vessels for global domination. She gives some examples of
| totalitarian leaders rejecting both of these ideologies as not
| sufficiently ambitious, after using them as stepping stones.
|
| My own interpretation is that it begins by inculcating an
| identity of shame and powerlessness, which respectively create
| the necessary righteous cruelty and infinite appetite for power
| to get a totalitarian movement going and neutralizing
| opposition to its aims, e.g. "for good men to do nothing." It
| is systematized, and simple enough to iterate and scale,
| because what it truly was is directed chaos. Defeating it is
| also simple set of rules, and is in fact related to defeating
| loneliness as well, but that's a much longer topic.
| PaulHoule wrote:
| If anything the socialist movement foundered in the 1920s in
| that internationalism didn't sell politically.
|
| For instance, Lenin and Co immediately surrendered to the
| Germans because "it is not our war" and the Germans said
| "Great! Here's our list of demands!" and it was an
| embarrassment given that Germany lost the war a month later.
|
| See the Chris Harman classic
|
| https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/lost-revolution-chris-
| harma...
|
| to see what went down in Germany afterwards.
| rzodkiew wrote:
| I think you're quite close with the inculcation of identity
| of shame and powerlessness. I'd go one step further and say
| it's inculcating of identity in general. As well as
| manufactured desires to keep power systems in place.
|
| People are not encouraged to find their own identity or
| explore inner mind. It's all bread and circus everywhere, to
| stop you from paying attention to your inner self. We have
| ancient teachings on this topic dating way, way back (like
| Upanishads), yet we still haven't found a good way to
| actually teach and implement them.
| frongpik wrote:
| That's a clever observation. To put it simpler, a dictator is a
| magnet that aligns individual resentments of citizens. People
| can't align resentment themselves without an external guide.
| But loneliness isn't the cause of resentment, it's rather the
| feeling of being excluded. Without the anchor of inner
| philosophy, one can be easily manipulated into building up the
| resentment and directing it at a false target.
| totemandtoken wrote:
| Interesting this is trending on hackernews when a few days ago an
| article on using Tulpas to alleviate loneliness was trending.
| Hackernews zeitgeist - are you alright?
| 8fhdkjw039hd wrote:
| Growing up, the internet did not feel real to me. Just a
| collection of memes fighting each other, fire-walled from
| reality. It seemed like an entertaining farce but not real.
|
| This was relatively true for the internet I grew up with, but it
| is certainly not true now. What happened in the capital was quite
| a wake up call. And much of the blame for it does look to be the
| result of things like click-through maximization and engagement
| maximization pushing people towards extremes, things like karma
| and likes allocating status to those staking out extreme
| positions. It is a terrifying thing to think about, but if you
| start thinking of social media influencers and followers as a
| sort of client-patron relationship, the historical precedents are
| not comforting.
|
| For myself, I am coming to terms with the fact that I cannot
| really trust any opinions that have been inculcated in me during
| the wild years of social media. I have deleted my Reddit and
| Facebook accounts, have diligently trained the YouTube algorithms
| to avoid any even remotely political content. I no longer trust
| myself to develop sensible opinions in such an adversarial
| environment and am doing my best to just not have political
| opinions and focus on simple things like maths and programming.
|
| Steve Omohundro had a talk recently where he described the need
| for "personal AIs" to help individuals resist manipulation from
| corporate AIs maximizing engagement. Perhaps once such things
| like this exist, I will allow myself to have opinions. But until
| then, I don't think I have any hope of making sense of this
| cacophony tuned for my engagement. Until I get such a thing, this
| will be my last post on HackerNews.
| [deleted]
| jacobobryant wrote:
| > Steve Omohundro had a talk recently where he described the
| need for "personal AIs" to help individuals resist manipulation
| from corporate AIs maximizing engagement.
|
| This reminds me of The Big Promise of Recommender Systems
| (2011) [1]:
|
| > However, when we look at the current recommender systems
| generation from the point of view of the "recommendee" (users'
| side) we can see that recommender systems are more inclined
| toward achieving short-term sales and business goals. Instead
| of helping their users to cope with the problem of information
| overload they can actually contribute to information overload
| by proposing recommendations that do not meet the users'
| current needs or interests. ...
|
| > The window of opportunity is now open to innovate in a third
| generation of recommender systems that act directly on behalf
| of their users and help them cope with information overload.
|
| I'm working on something in this space myself[2] (an essay
| recommender system). I think part of the solution is having
| recommender systems that are decoupled from publishing; e.g. a
| video recommender that suggests videos across multiple,
| unaffiliated sites, instead of the recommender that's built
| into YouTube.
|
| [1]
| https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Marc_Torrens/publicatio...
|
| [2] https://essays.findka.com
| laurent92 wrote:
| So you are withdrawing yourself from having political opinions
| or learning about it. It also means you will follow what feels
| right, for example in promoting equality or getting rid of
| USA's extreme elements at work. Since you do not decide for
| yourself, you will accept whatever is introduced to you as
| extreme elements.
|
| Isn't that the very definition of totalitarianism? People who
| won't make decisions based on ideas they articulate, but rather
| let themselves go to accept other people's decisions?
| Bakary wrote:
| You are making a political statement and following a defined
| political outlook without realizing it.
|
| In any case, I would not worry as the chance of being in a
| situation where political opinions actually matter is quite low
| for most people
| motohagiography wrote:
| That aspect of her thesis was called political "atomization,"
| which was the creation of this lonely state by isolating people
| from each other, and ultimately from truth, so that they become
| neutralized to the totalitarian agenda. The destruction of
| communities, families, and social connections is a totalitarian
| process and agenda.
|
| It was the result of a campaign of arbitrariness and farcical
| lying because the real target and conquest of totalitarianism is
| truth itself. When nothing can be believed, all opposition is
| neutralized. This neutralization and eventual liquidation is the
| totalitarian process. Activists project this as "stochastic
| terror," these days, but the technique goes back over a couple
| hundred years. What was exceptionally notable about that book,
| and is a bullet point in the article, is that the very idea of
| history as progress itself is the initial condition of ideology.
|
| The final chapter "ideology and terror," is the distillation I
| think people should read today, but the whole book, particularly
| the initial chapters that are an unblinking view of antisemitism,
| colonial thinking, and the nation state are sound foundations for
| thinking about the 20th century.
| platz wrote:
| It should be recognized that the left, especially neoliberals,
| has played just as much a role in atomization of the public as
| the right.
|
| Indeed, it is usually conservatives that actually, in practice,
| attempt to promote community and family values.
|
| Although portions of the right have contributed to atomization
| via the 'free market', the left's project of scientism and
| eschewing of tradition arguably has also contributed
| significantly to this.
| rusk wrote:
| > the left, especially neoliberals
|
| It seems kind of funny to see these two lumped together ... I
| don't think neoliberalism would be considered left by left
| people ...
|
| I think the confusion arises from the different
| interpretation of liberalism on either side of the Atlantic.
|
| Neoliberalism is an economic movement rather than a social
| one (unlike neoconservatism, the political ideology that
| funnily enough advocates neoliberalism) and it's an iteration
| of classical economics aka "economic liberalism".
|
| Liberal economics is actually more like libertarianism which
| is paradoxically more closely aligned with the "right wing"
| mindset.
|
| Neoliberalism does incorporate some notes about
| redistribution of wealth for reasons of economic expedience
| but this is rarely seen in practice.
|
| This all goes to show that words are slippery and labels are
| bullshit and you're far better off trying to understand where
| the people you're disagreeing with are coming from than be
| lazily painting them as this or that.
| [deleted]
| platz wrote:
| I'm not sure what the point you're driving at is; it seems
| you did understand the gist of my point.
|
| It seems like you want a semantics debate about how neocons
| and neolibs are are equivalent terms? Sorry, not the
| conversation for me, nor the main point I was making.
| yrimaxi wrote:
| d
| platz wrote:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25850671
| rusk wrote:
| You didn't make it very well it seems.
| flagrant wrote:
| I think what he's driving at is that your point relies on
| the assumption that neoliberalism is left wing, when this
| is not true.
| rusk wrote:
| To be honest all I think I was really driving at is that
| he sets the tone in the first sentence that he's
| uninformed about what he's talking about. I kind of get
| the impression also that he's trying to be divisive
| rather than understand the issues at hand. I kind of feel
| he goes against the hacker ethic on both points ...
| platz wrote:
| > your point relies on the assumption that neoliberalism
| is left wing, when this is not true
|
| I didn't say that all neoliberals were left wing.
|
| I said that there were some people on the the left that
| were neoliberals.
|
| Please understand this difference.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neoliberalism#United_States
|
| > Early roots of neoliberalism were laid in the 1970s
| during the Carter administration, with deregulation of
| the trucking, banking and airline
| industries,[144][145][146] as well as the appointment of
| Paul Volcker to chairman of the Federal Reserve.[21]:5
|
| > During the 1990s, the Clinton administration also
| embraced neoliberalism[130] by supporting the passage of
| the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA),
| continuing the deregulation of the financial sector
| through passage of the Commodity Futures Modernization
| Act and the repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act and
| implementing cuts to the welfare state through passage of
| the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity
| Act.[147][149][150]
|
| You seem to presuppose your claims are de-facto correct;
| I don't think that is true.
| rusk wrote:
| Nope, sorry, not convinced. There's something askew in
| your outlook and I think it's affecting your ability to
| make your point. I'd suggest reevaluating your
| fundamentals and going from there. Take care brother
| platz wrote:
| Feel free to respond with reasons for your claims, thanks
| and take care
| yrimaxi wrote:
| d
| platz wrote:
| > Deregulation, cuts to welfare, NAFTA. Again, you fail
| to demonstrate the left point.
|
| "No true Scotsman"
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > It should be recognized that the left, especially
| neoliberals, has played just as much a role in atomization of
| the public as the right.
|
| Neoliberalism is a center-right, corporate capitalist
| economic ideology. It has nothing to do with the Left, which
| it sees (and is seen by as) an enemy. (Americans are
| particularly likely to get confused by this because the
| dominant, more centrist faction of the Democratic Party is
| neoliberal, and the Democratic Party is the left-most of the
| US's major parties.)
|
| But, yes, it has played a central role in atomization of
| society.
| platz wrote:
| > It has nothing to do with the Left
|
| Well, _nothing_ to do with the left may be a bit of an
| overstatement, imho.
|
| If the "Left" is such a problematic term, then let's just
| agree to avoid using the term, since you seem to be of the
| position that the "more centrist faction of the Democratic
| Party" is not Left.
|
| I would assume the term "Left" includes both the "more
| centrist faction of the Democratic Party" and the more
| left-leaning social-democratic ideologies.
|
| The left is a big tent composed of many factions.
|
| also, linking this for citations:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25850671
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > since you seem to be of the position that the "more
| centrist faction of the Democratic Party" is not Left.
|
| It's not.
|
| Also, neoliberalism was the economic ideology of the
| dominant faction of the Republican Party prior to Trump,
| too, and few would call them "the Left". (There were
| differences in social ideology, of course, between
| Republicans and Democrats.) Hence the "neoliberal
| consensus" of the 1990s and beyond.
| platz wrote:
| I don't think anyone is confusing the Republican party
| with the left.
|
| However it seems who gets to be in "the left" and who
| doesn't seems to be very up for debate these days.
|
| I'm fairly certain if you asked anyone in the 90's if the
| clinton administration was on the left they'd answer in
| the affirmative.
|
| I understand the social democratic part of the left has
| evolved and differentiated itself since then. This is
| great, but I think it problematic to retcon the history
| exclusively this view.
|
| Just because the social democratic faction would like
| complete ownership on the term "the left" I think does
| not make it so, or at least can be agreed to be a
| subjective claim.
| aphextron wrote:
| >That aspect of her thesis was called political "atomization,"
| which was the creation of this lonely state by isolating people
| from each other, and ultimately from truth, so that they become
| neutralized to the totalitarian agenda. The destruction of
| communities, families, and social connections is a totalitarian
| process and agenda.
|
| You can see this so clearly in any video of Trump rallies, or
| their protests. There is no conversation, conviviality, or
| sense of community happening between the attendees. It's a
| collection of completely disconnected individuals taking
| selfies and angrily screaming platitudes to the general crowd.
| It's quite disturbing to see.
|
| A prime example: https://youtu.be/L5hksM_R59M
| Matticus_Rex wrote:
| That is not what I've seen from the crowd except _during_
| speeches. I, too, naturally tend to believe the worst about
| these people but there 's definitely a sense of Trump
| supporter community there.
| pavlov wrote:
| There is a community there, but for many the process of
| joining this new community has involved the destruction of
| their existing links to family and local society. QAnon is
| the most extreme example of this kind of cultish separation
| among Trumpists.
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| I think there is a push and a pull going on. Many people
| feel like outsiders or are otherwise unfulfilled with
| their communities, making new associations more
| attractive
| gabereiser wrote:
| This. A slow toxic rot of self that erodes the family and
| community links until their thoughts and actions seem
| alien to the outside.
|
| Sounds like my ex-wife (fell victim to QAnon). :/
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| Since you brought it up, what factors do you think made
| you ex-wife susceptible to qanon ideas?
| gabereiser wrote:
| She was always susceptible to misinformation. When we
| moved to Central Florida a decade ago, they have what's
| called "Love Bugs". An invasive flying beetle from
| Central America. While on the job as a barista, someone
| told her they were genetically engineered at UCF. She
| believed him. Arguing with me that was the truth until I
| pointed her to science articles and Wikipedia.
|
| Fast forward a few years and the thought of sex-
| trafficking rings took root. She was convinced that girls
| were being abducted for sex slavery and that people in
| government were supporting them.
|
| This twisted even further when I confronted her about it,
| told her that what she thinks is real isn't, and she
| immediately jumped on me for gaslighting her.
|
| Needless to say, it was she that filed for divorce. I'm
| way happier now.
|
| Those that downvoted my comment above because my ex-wife,
| you should meet her, she's completely crazy now.
| hirundo wrote:
| It would be nice if public health agencies formally considered
| the public cost of such atomization from covid lockdowns. They
| may find in the end that the cost is worth paying, but it
| should be part of the analysis.
|
| But what kind of study could yield valid, reproducible data
| about how much atomization is caused by how much lockdown, and
| how much authoritarianism is caused by how much atomization?
| medium_burrito wrote:
| Useful data points I think would include: - Suicides,
| attempted and successful - Calls to suicide hotlines -
| Overdoses - Phone call data, assuming a sufficient database
| of people's relationships -> anecdotally, people are calling
| each other way less - Following what people are watching
| online- I bet youtube and facebook have an extremely good
| measure of how many general segments of viewing population
| there are, and I bet these have increased. Amazon book sales
| might do the same. - Alcohol sales, obviously. Friends in the
| industry say volume has quadrupled while unit price has
| dropped by a similar magnitude.
| Ygg2 wrote:
| > When nothing can be believed, all opposition is neutralized.
|
| I'm gonna recommend watching Hypernormalization by Adam Curtis.
| In it he talks about Vladislav Surkov basically turning the
| Russian political scene into a bizarre post modernist theater,
| where he would publicly proclaim to fund left wing, right wing
| or other, centrist parties and NGOs, to give the impression
| that everyone is working for Putin.
| PaulHoule wrote:
| "Mother should I build the wall?"
| motohagiography wrote:
| Such a poignant song about that generation and it foretold how
| they would run things.
| [deleted]
| mLuby wrote:
| Some passages that stood out to me:
|
| > Isolation and loneliness are not the same. I can be isolated -
| that is in a situation in which I cannot act, because there is
| nobody who will act with me - without being lonely; and I can be
| lonely - that is in a situation in which I as a person feel
| myself deserted by all human companionship - without being
| isolated.
|
| > Totalitarianism uses isolation to deprive people of human
| companionship, making action in the world impossible, while
| destroying the space of solitude.
|
| > One is taught to distrust oneself and others, and to always
| rely upon the ideology of the movement, which must be right. But
| in order to make individuals susceptible to ideology, you must
| first ruin their relationship to themselves and others.
|
| > Amid the chaos and uncertainty of human existence, we need a
| sense of place and meaning. We need roots. And ideologies, like
| the Sirens in Homer's Odyssey, appeal to us. But those who
| succumb to the siren song of ideological thinking...can't
| confront themselves in thinking because, if they do, they risk
| undermining the ideological beliefs that have given them a sense
| of purpose and place.
| matz1 wrote:
| Probably why government around the world like lockdown so much.
| hh3k0 wrote:
| You are aware that the vast majority of countries are
| democracies, right?
| matz1 wrote:
| Yes, lockdown gives them the power to be little totalitarian.
| hh3k0 wrote:
| Sorry, but you make no sense.
| toomim wrote:
| The lockdown gave leaders emergency authorization to make
| decisions without waiting for votes.
|
| In other words, leaders got authorization to bypass
| democracy.
| triceratops wrote:
| Do governments put every single decision they make to a
| general vote? You're confusing representative democracy
| with direct democracy. How many countries postponed or
| cancelled elections due to the pandemic? Only those would
| be considered to have "bypassed democracy".
| mikem170 wrote:
| Was there even one government that let their citizens vote on
| quarantine measures? That's what democracy is, or originally
| was, right?
| triceratops wrote:
| Here's a list of elections that occurred in 2020:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_elections_in_2020
|
| If voters disagreed with quarantine measures, they were
| free to vote those governments out.
|
| In general, people in representative democracies _don 't_
| vote on every single government decision. Voters elect
| representatives who vote on issues. I don't see why
| temporary health restrictions due to a pandemic would be
| any different.
| jimmyvalmer wrote:
| I read _Origins_ two weeks ago. Talk about couching overstatement
| in wordy layers of psychobabble. This piece is similarly long-
| winded and "in my feels" speculative.
| keiferski wrote:
| What this analysis misses is the role of individualism. Probably
| because _individualism = unquestionably good_ is perhaps the
| single most foundational belief of modern Western civilization.
|
| Twentieth-century totalitarianism could only have arisen from an
| industrial world in which the local social networks of family,
| village, and church were destroyed in the process of
| urbanization. Subsequently the less local social bonds one has,
| the more one becomes susceptible to mass political movements and
| extremist ideologies.
|
| Unfortunately the internet has only exacerbated this, where it's
| not uncommon to have more social interaction (even if it's only
| watching someone else) online than in person.
| api wrote:
| This misses other major factors including the role of ideology
| itself. People are thinking beings and ideas drive a great deal
| of human behavior. The 20th century saw the rise of
| collectivist utopian ideologies.
|
| Last but not least it's important to remember that humans have
| always been fighting and trying to control one another. 20th
| century war, genocide, and totalitarianism is new only in its
| scale.
| Matticus_Rex wrote:
| The American style of individualism in its traditional form is
| hardly anti-family/village/church. In fact, one of its notable
| characteristics for early observers used to European values was
| that Americans were prolific joiners. Want to do something?
| Start a club for it! That has broken down over the last
| decades, but blaming it on individualism seems questionable at
| best.
| keiferski wrote:
| Nowhere in my comment did I say American.
|
| The point is that urbanization and industrialization
| encouraged individualism. Today, the market itself does so.
| [deleted]
| erichocean wrote:
| It is disappointing Arendt is considered to be some kind of
| authority on totalitarianism (or worse still: evil).
| Unsurprising, though: TPTB find her conclusions useful, almost
| like she works backwards, telling powerful people what they want
| to hear...
|
| Make of that what you will.
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