Totalitarianism Seminar

The Origins of Totalitarianism – Hannah Arendt

Totalitarianism is completely different from other forms of political organisation. It develops an entirely new political institution and destroys all political, legal and cultural traditions of the country. It transforms the classes into masses and strips people of their individuality. Totalitarianism is so different from what has come before it’s difficult to predict their course of action. Some may try to compare totalitarianism as some modern form of tyranny but the difference is that tyranny is entirely lawless but totalitarianism believes that there’s a higher law.

Totalitarianism defies all positive law, even those it has established itself. Positive law= Statute and common law, laws that are developed by society. Totalitarian law is derived from the law of history or the law of nature. Arendt uses the examples of Nazi Germany and Communist Russia to demonstrate different types of totalitarian societies. Nazi Germany followed the law of nature, using biology, as the basis for their laws. The race struggle and segregation of the Jews was based on Darwin’s idea that man is a product of natural development. Whereas Stalin’s Communist Russia was based on Marx’s teleological view of history, that history is working towards something. Engels referred to Marx as the “Darwin of History”.

Totalitarianism is prepared to sacrifice everyone’s interests to follow the letter of the law. You remove people’s individuality so they can’t break away from the regime. It has total bureaucracy so that if one person goes against the ideology then there is always someone above them to punish them. Because totalitarian regimes invade every aspect of society there are no public spaces for people to express their feelings or exchange ideas of rebellion, so people begin to feel isolated, which prevents revolution.

Terror and ideology strips away peoples responsibility and ability to choose as they depend on the authority to take the responsibility. An example of this is the Milgram experiment.
You don’t have to be inherently evil to do bad things, Arendt identifies this as the “banality of evil”. An example of this is the Stanford Prison Experiment, where Professor Zimbardo created a prison atmosphere using student volunteers who were assigned the role of prisoner or guard for two weeks. Zimbardo took the role of prison officer. He gave the guards the position of total power but they weren’t allowed to use physical violence. By day 2 some of the prisoners chose to rebel by barricading themselves in their rooms with their bed. The professor didn’t expect them to rebel so early but they were rebelling against the status differences. The guards were given reflective sunglasses so they couldn’t see their eyes which reduced their humanity. The prisoner at the head of the rebellion was put in the “hole” which was a completely dark, small, cramped space. The guards would wake the prisoners up in the middle of the night to disorientate them and force them to do menial tasks and hard physical work, whilst they hurled insults at them. One prisoner asked to leave, at which point the professor (acting as prison officer) offered him instead the option to act as a snitch. The prisoner then took this as he was not allowed to leave and he returned to tell the other prisoners that they weren’t permitted to leave. The prisoner then pretended to be crazy but this soon began to turn into real mental issues, at which point he was allowed to leave the experiment. After he left rumours began that he was going to return to free the other prisoners. The professor reacted to this as a prison officer and saw this as a real threat so chose to relocate the prisoners. Zimbardo was questioned about the legitimacy of the experiment but he was by this point more concerned about the prison than the experiment.  The rumoured jailbreak never took place which they took out on the prisoners. The prisoners then lost their unity and didn't stand by one another. Prisoner 819 went to leave the experiment but when he was leaving he heard the other prisoners shout “prisoner 819 did a bad thing”. This made 819 not want to go as he didn't want to be a bad prisoner and the professor had to remind him that this wasn't a real prison. As time went on the guards became more creative with their evil. Prisoner 416 went on a hunger strike and by da 5 was put in the hole. The prisoners were offered the option to give up their blankets in return for 416 being allowed to leave and none of the prisoners agreed to this. The prisoners completely lost any sense of unity and sided with the guards view of 416. By day 5, 4 prisoners had broken down and been released. Another professor went down to see the experiment and she was disgusted by the suffering of the young men. The next day the experiment ended.

There are three types of ideology:
1) Based on motion based on history.
2) Becomes independent from experience/reality
3) Individuals perceptions of reality always changes

Propaganda removes the reality from experience. Terror is the realisation of the totalitarian movement. The totalitarian regime claims to transform human beings into unfailing carriers of law, which before they were just subject to.