Hannah Arendt Has Been Warning Us the Whole Time
The weaponization of time and authoritarianism
Hannah Arendt is a philosopher whose work is defined by her experience as a Jew in Nazi Germany. Before fleeing to the US in 1941, she documented antisemitism in Germany and France. She watched the disintegration of collective moral consciousness and thoughtfully illustrated it in her book Origins of Totalitarianism. She notes one of the key factors of the rise of Nazi Germany was a need to pin blame on the financial struggles that ensued after WWI. Due to the rising antisemitism in Europe, this unfortunately made Jews the natural choice for this scapegoating. So many of her concepts are applicable today, in many capacities, in many places; further, applying her concepts to our current context unveils a truly daunting truth about our political landscape today.
Arendt’s philosophy of time describes our relationship with the world as a constant struggle against nature. She defines nature as an eternal cycle that, with time, inherently makes things slip away, a fundamentally destructive force. This concept illustrates the tragic essence of her philosophy and highlights how fleeting human existence is. Furthermore, it stresses the importance of documenting facts and retelling them. Concerning history, many facts are lost to time. This is in part due to the fragility of facts. Without people deliberately telling others about things, the past would be swept away- completely fading into obscurity. Sharing facts gives them a “space of appearance” and makes them a unique moment in time, one to be remembered and retold. Arendt states, “Without the articulation accomplished by remembrance, there simply was no story left that could be told”. Essentially, humans can freeze time, in a sense, by noticing reality and documenting it through remembrance, public discussion, journalism, or historical records; consequently giving them a space of appearance, or significance to humanity.
She divides knowledge into different types of durable and fragile ideas. Scientific and philosophical truths are defined as durable because they can be rediscovered. For example, the “golden rule” has been discovered independently in various cultures. Fragile ideas are described as something that cannot be rediscovered, like an event in time. She states, “Once they are lost, no rational effort can bring them back.” Arendt’s example of this is the Holocaust, as many of its events have disintegrated with time as a deliberate effort by Nazis. This is because the Nazi leadership knew that there is power in documentation and remembrance; hence limiting it to assure the horrors became events that were lost to time.
Time is the most powerful tool in the toolbox for bad people because of its natural ability to banish facts from existence. Totalitarian regimes can flourish when they have a population of people with “goldfish memories.” This type of population is cultivated by destroying institutions that mark events, habituating the public to violence so people don’t notice, and hiring “family men” who have no concern for anything beyond their personal interests and advancement (like Adolf Eichmann, an organizer of the Holocaust who, during his trial, stood unbothered concerning the severity of his crimes). This strategy allowed the Nazis to systematically promote “organized oblivion,” manipulating people’s understanding and remembrance of events. This phenomenon, in conjunction with the destructive passage of time, made mass murder a non-event and blurred the line between fact and opinion. They covertly convinced people to homogenize the horrors with the trials of their everyday lives, normalizing it, and further, doing it in a way where people weren’t consciously aware of their ignorance.
A final fundamental aspect of Arendt’s philosophy is the understanding that facts are the main competitor to political power. Facts provide arguments with power and deepened understanding, or radical contingency, despite still being delicate. Arendt simply puts it: “Facts inform opinions, and opinions, inspired by different interests and passions, can differ widely and still be legitimate as long as they respect factual truth”. However, their innate fragility opens the door to “more logical” explanations, which can veer from fact, explaining the appeal of conspiracy theories. Reason and rationality provide a logical chain of events or an easily digestible explanation for often complex issues. When someone effectively merges opinion with fact or entirely paints opinion as fact, they have the power to then rewrite this narrative, ensuring both that opinion is understood as fact and that factual truth will vanish from memory.
I’m sure it is now clear that all of these principles are happening in the United States right now, and have for decades. Arendt’s remarks about habituating the public to violence and creating organized oblivion are directly applicable to American foreign policy, whether it be the war on terror, Gaza, or military interventions broadly. Her discussion about Jews being scapegoated is reflected in the current moral panic about illegal immigrants. Examples of such parallels stretch much further than the examples I gave, and knowing that these methods of cultural manipulation are not new, but rather being recycled by authoritarian regimes throughout history, can also give way to what the future of America could be if changes are not made. One of Arendt’s most profound statements goes as follows: "If everybody always lies to you, the consequence is...that nobody believes anything any longer. A people that no longer can believe anything cannot make up its mind...with such a people you can then do what you please.” While Arendt’s philosophy is much more vast than what I have covered here, let her insights empower you to work toward a better future, break the cycle of our very own regime, continue to make vital historical connections, and most importantly, use your voice to further empower your community.
We are dangerously near being a sea of unmoored people out on the ocean with a hurricane imminent.