The Lies of Totalitarianism

Review by Bill Doughty–

"To be sure, totalitarian dictators do not consciously embark upon the road to insanity."

So writes Hannah Arendt, gifted thinker and historian in "The Origins of Totalitarianism" (Schoken Books, Random House, 1948, 1957; renewed 1976). Her work is vital to anyone interested in understanding the Holocaust or the rise of Fascism.

Leo Hymas speaks about his personal experiences to a group of Soldiers about World War II and the Holocaust at French Theater on Joint Base Lewis-McChord, WA., April 29, 2014 to educate the JBLM community of the history and significance of the Holocaust. (Photo by Sgt. Jasmine Higgins/Released)

Totalitarian leaders use fear, existential threats, and targeting of "the other" – people perceived to have no rights. Most of all, dictators or would-be dictators tell lies.

Hitler and Stalin

Profiling the Nazis under Adolf Hitler and Bolsheviks under Josef Stalin, Arendt examines the characteristics, effects and results of dictatorship. She also helps answer how and why people were willing to believe their supreme leaders' lies.

"Mass propaganda discovered that its audience was ready at all times to believe the worst, no matter how absurd, and did not particularly object to being deceived because it held every statement to be a lie anyhow. The totalitarian mass leaders based their propaganda on the correct psychological assumption that, under such conditions, one could make people believe the most fantastic statements one day, and trust that if the next day they were given irrefutable proof of their falsehood, they would take refuge in cynicism; instead of deserting the leaders who had lied to them, they would protest that they had known all along that the statement was a lie and would admire the leaders for their superior tactical cleverness."

Emaciated prisoners at the Ebensee camp.

Regarding the belief in unbelievable lies and falsehoods, Arendt writes, "Totalitarian propaganda can outrageously insult common sense only where common sense has lost its validity." People had to believe lies and dehumanize in order justify murdering millions of other people during the Holocaust.

Arendt explains how narcissistic autocrats are drawn to rituals and symbols. Marches, military parades and self-adulating shows of idolatry reinforce the propaganda.

She compares Nazi and Bolshevik mass propaganda. Both heavily depended on conspiracy theories, either age-old themes (such as "The Protocols of the Elders of Zion" forgery and anti-semitism) or invented fears (countless sinister imperialist or internal conspiracies).

"The effectiveness of this kind of propaganda demonstrates one of the chief characteristics of modern masses. They do not believe in anything visible, in the reality of their own experience; they do not trust their eyes and ears but only their imaginations, which may be caught by anything that is at once universal and consistent in itself. What convinces masses are not facts, and not even invented facts, but only the consistency of the system of which they are presumably part. Repetition, somewhat overrated in importance because of the common belief in the masses' inferior capacity to grasp and remember, is important only because it convinces them of consistency in time."

Bergen-Belsen camp, liberated April 15, 1945.

"Repetition ... is important" in propaganda and mind control. Arendt, of course, writes in a time before the internet, social media and smart phones. In 2020, distorted truths and outright lies can be repeated and shared in ways unthinkable in the 1940s and 50s.

The Leader establishes a "spell of infallibility" and thrives in chaos. "The totalitarian ruler must, at any price, prevent normalization from reaching the point where a new way of life could develop," Arendt writes. Followers must have contempt for the nonbelievers and outsiders. 

"The result of this system is that the gullibility of sympathizers makes lies credible to the outside world, while at the same time the graduated cynicism of membership and elite formations eliminates the danger that the Leader will ever be forced by the weight of his own propaganda to make good his own statements and feigned respectability. It has been one of the chief handicaps of the outside world in dealing with totalitarian systems that it ignored this system and therefore trusted that, on one hand, the very enormity of totalitarian lies would be their undoing and that, on the other, it would be possible to take the Leader at his word and force him, regardless of his original intentions, to make it good. The totalitarian system, unfortunately, is foolproof against such normal consequences; its ingeniousness rests precisely on the elimination of that reality which either unmasks the liar or forces him to live up to his pretense."

Arendt in 1924

"Totalitarianism in power," Arendt writes, "uses the state as its outward façade, to represent the country in the nontotalitarian world." Ignoring or appeasing dictators may not work. They often will find ways to manipulate the system to remain in power.

Imperialism and Role of Racism

"Origins" is presented in three parts: Anti-Semitism, Imperialism and Totalitarianism. Part II, Imperialism, is the longest section and examines the "brutality and megalomania" of the ideology that brought about the World Wars. In words that resonate today in light of Putin's revanchism toward Crimea and Ukraine, we read: "The initiative for continental expansion in close geographic continuity no longer comes from Central and Eastern Europe [i.e. Nazi Germany] but is exclusively located in Russia."

Imperialism, Arendt shows, was supported by the right and the left, often encouraged by the workers who saw economic benefits. "In Germany, the liberals (and not the Conservative Party) were the actual promoters of that famous naval policy which contributed so heavily to the outbreak of the first World War." The Socialist Party also "repeatedly voted" to obligate funds to build the German navy after 1906.

The British trawler Rudyard Kipling, launched in 1920, was sunk by a German U-boat in 1939.

She calls author Rudyard Kipling "the author of imperialist legend" for the British Empire, establishing a "foundation legend" based on the sea, quoting him from "The First Sailor" (Humorous Tales, 1871). Arendt writes:

"The foundation legend, as Kipling tells it, starts from the fundamental reality of the people of the British Isles. Surrounded by the sea, they need and win the help of the three elements of Water, Wind, and Sun through the invention of the Ship. The ship made the always dangerous alliance with the elements possible and made the Englishman master of the world. 'You'll win the world without anyone knowing how you did it: and you'll carry the world on your backs without anyone seeing how you did it. But neither you nor your sons will get anything out of that little job except Four gifts – one for the Sea, one for the Wind, one for the Sun and one for the Ship that carries you ... For, winning the world, and keeping the world, and carrying the world on their backs – on land, or on the sea, or in the air – your sons will always have the Four Gifts. Long-headed and slow-spoken and heavy – damned heavy – in the hand, will they be; and always a little bit to windward of every enemy – that they may be a safeguard to all who pass on the seas on their lawful occasions.'"

This passage sums up, as Arendt recognizes, the so-called "white man's burden" – as well as, it could be argued, "manifest destiny" exceptionalism and white supremacist racism.

Early European colonists in Africa captured slaves, often pitting tribes against each other.

Africa was exploited by colonialists and imperialists in the centuries leading up to the 19th century. Seafaring nations, especially Britain, established "maritime and trade stations" to promote commercial exchange. Commerce included African slaves. Arendt presents an eye-opening discussion about South Africa's Boers, who were descended from Dutch settlers, and how they acted out of fear, exterminated tribes and then accepted another banality of evil: apartheid.

What fuels imperialism? "Racism is the main ideological weapon of imperialistic politics," Arendt contends, Russians who consider themselves Slavs, Germans who think they are superior Aryans.

Diversity in a nation is shown as a bulwark and strength. "Racism may indeed carry out the doom of the Western world and, for that matter, of the whole of human civilization."

Power Lessons for 2020

From its 600 pages, packed with history and philosophy, it would be impossible to summarize all of Arendt's points in this blog. But her points seem as fresh and relevant in 2020 as they did 70 years ago, even as she admits, "No matter how much we may be unable of learning from the past, it will not enable us to know the future."

Hobbes's "Leviathan"

Through Arendt we discover lessons from history that can can apply to current events: Corruption in the Soviet Union but supposedly not in Communist China, the Dreyfus Affair, "Secret Judah" and "Secret Rome," and the roles of some Catholics (Pius XII and "The Deputy") and Protestants (Martin Niemöller) in dealing with the Nazis.

Arendt gives an extended interpretation of mid-17th-century philosopher Thomas Hobbes and his treatise on social contracts in a civil society, "Leviathan." She writes, "Power, according to Hobbes, is the accumulated control that permits the individual to fix prices and regulate supply and demand in such a way that they contribute to his own advantage." A "never-ending accumulation of power necessary for a never-ending accumulation of capital ... foreshadowed the rise of imperialism."

"Origin" lays out how imperialism grew out of colonialism. Arendt explains Soviet goals and seems to predict Russian aggression in Georgia, Crimea and Ukraine, from a perspective more than half a century ago. "The initiative for continental expansion in close geographic continuity no longer comes from Central and Eastern Europe but is exclusively Russian," She writes. "No one justifies expansion any longer by 'the white man's burden ...; instead we hear of 'commitments' to client states, of the responsibilities of power, and of solidarity with revolutionary national liberation movements.'"

A hopeful sign comes in a chapter called "A Classless Society": "Nothing is more characteristic of the totalitarian movements in general and of the quality of fame of their leaders in particular than the startling swiftness with which they are forgotten and the startling ease with which they can be replaced."

Laced throughout this indispensable history of totalitarianism is an unspoken warning, though. Beware the lies, especially the big lies. Demand clear, consistent, trusted messaging and honesty from leaders. Most of all, recognize the insanity.

U.S. Navy Sailors assigned to the guided-missile destroyer USS Jason Dunham (DDG 109) tour the Haifa Holocaust Museum as part of a community relations event during a scheduled port visit to Haifa, Israel, June 22, 2018. (U.S. Navy photo by Mass Communication Specialist 3rd Class Jonathan Clay/Released)