![]() The problem is that Nazism was so horrifying and so barbaric that for many people in nations where authoritarianism is now achieving a foothold, it is hard to see parallels between Hitler’s regime and their own governments. ” “In such a time, we might be tempted to try to learn something from earlier turns toward authoritarianism, particularly the triumphant rise of the Nazis in Germany in the 1930s. Just a few days after mass protest forced the Trump Administration to backtrack from its heartless and soulless policy of separating children from their parents, Sunstein’s essay reminds us of the importance of individual “actions of conscience both small and large, by people who never make it into the history books. They explore how “ the collapse of freedom and the rule of law occurred in increments, some of which seemed to be relatively small and insignificant.” They describe how fake news worked in Germany: “Four of Mayer’s subjects insisted that the only Jews taken to concentration camps were traitors to Germany, and that the rest were permitted to leave with their property or its fair market value.” The third, looking past the Nazi period itself, concludes that “many Germans have been transformed “into sincere democrats and pacifists who want to prevent a recurrence of earlier horrors.” For Sunstein, the lessons from these books is that “habituation, confusion, distraction, self-interest, fear, rationalization, and a sense of personal powerlessness make terrible things possible.” He is right to look backwards at these small histories. These books look at individuals-the little people-who supported Hitler and the Nazis, or who simply turned their heads and made peace with the Nazi rise. There are now millions of people in refugee camps with little hope that they will be able to return to their homes or ever find a new one.”įorm more information visit: The Road to PerditionĬass Sunstein approaches the question “Can it happen here” by revisiting a series of books, one from 1939, another from 1955, and one focused on memoirs by Germans born in the 1920s. Almost every significant political event during the past 100 years has resulted in the multiplication of new categories of refugees, and there appears to be no end in sight. ![]() When Arendt wrote this she could scarcely have realized how relevant her observations would be in 2018. In it, she graphically describes what it means to lose one’s home, one’s language and one’s occupation, and concludes with a more general claim about the political consequences of the new mass phenomenon - the “creation” of masses of people forced to leave their homes and their country: “Refugees driven from country to county represent the new vanguard of their peoples … The comity of European peoples went to pieces when, and because, it allowed its weakest member to be excluded and persecuted. One of Arendt’s early articles, the 1943 essay “We Refugees,” based on her personal experiences of statelessness, raises fundamental questions. Arendt was one of the first major political thinkers to warn that the ever-increasing numbers of stateless persons and refugees would continue to be an intractable problem. When she speaks of “dark times” and warns of the “exhortations, moral and otherwise, that under the pretext of upholding old truths degrade all truth in meaningless triviality” we can hear not only a critique of the horrors of 20th-century totalitarianism, but also a warning about forces pervading the politics of the United States and Europe today. “ was remarkably perceptive about some of the deepest problems, perplexities and dangerous tendencies in modern political life, many of them still with us today. Richard Bernstein, Professor of Philosophy at The New School and a former student of Arendt’s, has written a book on why we should read Arendt now he argues that Arendt offers illumination for those reaching for light in dark times. Since the election of Donald Trump more people than ever have been reading Hannah Arendt.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |