Philosophy Lecture - Totalitarianism

Totalitarianism

Things we will cover in this lecture

1. How could it happen? (Origins of Totalitarianism)
2. Control Language - control thought (Orwell’s 1984)
3. What is your personal responsibility? (Eichmann in Jerusalem)

Key question - can good people do evil things?

Main Person - Hannah Arendt

Her Book - The Origins of Totalitarianism

How could it happen?

Nearly 100 years of relative peace before WW1 after Napoleon things did settle down a little - then huge atrocities in Russia, China and especially Germany, one of the most cultured nations in the world (the German century). As a race we began to control these vulgar parts of our personalities, overall we were better and the future was brighter. Within every year that passed we improved (after Napoleon) all the bad stuff was just part of history. This was the german century mid 19th century, all the philosophers etc were German. It seemed like we were coming up to the promised Land (Hegel’s teleological approach) pushing on terms of cultural, scientific and philosophical process.  

Totalitarian regimes - Plato’s republic - against these ideas: contact theory, idea that the powers of the state should be limited (even by Hobbes), Liberalism - personal freedom protected by the state. Totalitarian regimes - strip away any individuality.

Hannah Arendt (HA) argues the 20th Century totalitarian regimes were different to anything that had come before - the central purpose of totalitarian regimes was to destroy the individual, utterly. The divine right of Kings - the kings could do whatever they wanted, HA is saying this is different, the Nazi’s etc were different to what had come before. These regimes were strange. She was fascinated with the newness/strangeness of this new political model:
“Everything we know of totalitarianism demonstrates a horrible originality - it’s very actions constitute a break with all our traditions.”

“Fascism is for liberty. And for the only liberty which can be a real ting, the liberty of the State and of the individual within the State. Therefore, for the fascist, everything is in the State, and nothing human or spiritual exists, much less has value - outside the state.
Outside the state there can be neither individuals nor groups. Everything in the state, nothing outside the state, nothing against the state.” 

• The Doctrine of Fascism - Benito Mussolini
  

The state is the food you eat, the drinks you drink. You are either with the state or not. Etc

But she saw the imperialism as a precursor to totalitarianism - because it contained so many traits which the new regimes could use. (The imperial expansion were based on races, which are the most inferior race etc based on genes not what people have done)
One such trait of imperialism was the development of racism. -within racist movements, you are superior based on your genes, not on anything you have done. Once established, ways of thinking and behaving that denied rights to large sections of humanity were available for totalitarian regimes to adopt. (think of General Kitchener’s actions in Boer War - the concentration camps used by the British were the model that the Nazis used)
YOUR COUNTRY NEEDS YOU - slogan. Kitchener’s - pack people in concentration camps and the Germans used this idea in the future.

Our individuality makes us difficult to control and gather up into a collective movement. To destroy this individuality two methods are used: state terror and ideology. - HA

The purpose of the terror is not just to murder vast numbers of people - but also to destroy their individuality and ability to act against the government - not just to act, but even the thought of acting (Think Orwell) E.g. When you kill someone, no one thinks of them as human.

Ideology compliments the policy of terror - it eliminates the capacity for individual thought and experience among the executioners themselves [Orwell WAR IS PEACE; FREEDOM IS SLAVERY; POVERTY IS PLENTY]
Ideology is also a type of specialist knowledge - as Popper points out is often used as a justification for the authority of rulers. It is also a way to avoid responsibility.

The Ideology [natural or historical movements] gives them “the total explanation of the past, the total knowledge of the present, and the reliable prediction of the future” OT p469

Ideology frees the mind from the constraints of common sense and reality. This breakdown of the stable human world means loss of the institutional and psychological barriers that normally set limits to what is possible. Things you might of never considered doing, you might end up doing as the norm. 

For HA the first move the Nazis made on the road to the “Final Solution” was to deny Jews citizenship - making them stateless and removing their rights. She argues that rights are only relevant within nations - not “natural rights”. These stateless people - without any rights - were superfluous - and perfect victims for a totalitarian regime.

The Jews were a rootless community based on race. The Nazis saw them as a rival master race, a model to be emulated and overtaken. This was the idea of Hannah Arendt

Here she highlights the fragility of civilisation - how quickly groups and whole people can fall through the cracks, even in the heart of Europe. People thought in the 19th century we as humanity had become more decent but if it was in a bad situation and people are there who can exploit that, these barriers can come down very quickly. 

To be civilised human beings we need to inhabit a man-made world of stable structures (remember her view on judgement in Eichmann). We need these to give us laws, rights and provide a society which gives us access to common sense and a shared reality. Almost a hint of Hobbes there or Aristotle, we are only human in a society where we are free to be different. We need that. As when things start to break down it becomes a jungle. 

1. Control language - control minds
   

WW2 - Ministry of War (now it’s called ministry of defense) - MOD (it goes and invades countries basically).

Orwell was horrified by the capacity of totalitarian regimes to attempt to control minds, by manipulating languages.

Thought takes place in purely linguistic terms.

Therefore: Control language, and you control thought

Therefore: Mind control (may be) possible through manipulation of language.

In the USSR - experiments with ‘linguistic reform’
Idea was utopian - ban words for racial difference, and this abolish racism (very like PC language now).
This resulted in horrible, ugly distortion into Communist-speak - all - jargon, cliches, ritual phrases, slogans. A form of language designed to prevent thought.

1984
Ministry of Peace - organises war
Ministry of Love - organises the police
Ministry of Plenty - gathers taxes

In the novel - Winston’s job is removing articles from the archive which contradict the current (ever changing) line on the party. 

3. What is your personal responsibility in a dictatorship?

Would I collaborate?

In May 11 1960, Israeli Secret Service kidnapped Nazi fugitive Adolf Eichmann in Argentina. He stood trial in Jerusalem for crimes he had committed during the final solution. Eichmann’s main responsibility during the Holocaust had been the organisation of the transport of millions of Jews from across Europe to concentration camps - a function he carried out with zeal and efficiency. 

For the Israelis the trial served three purposes: Trying Eichmann for his crimes, educating the world about the nature and extent of the Holocaust, and the legitimatizing of the Jewish state. 

For Arendt it was a shock to see Eichmann - he spoke in endless cliches, was proud of being a “law abiding citizen” - she concluded that it was not necessary to possess great wickedness to commit great crimes - the banality of evil. He was a typical bureaucrat. He looked so normal, like a typical librarian. He said he wasn’t involved in the killing of Jews, he just sorted out the transportation.

Arendt agreed with the judgement that Eichmann should be put to death - but she disagreed with the reasons and the spectacle of the trial.

Arendt believed Eichmann’s crime was non-thinking ... Choice is crucial to the existentialist point of view.
Hannah Arendt is saying that he didn’t make a choice and you can not avoid choice. He didn’t chose so he got put in this position.

Eichmann claimed that in implementing the final solution he was acting from obedience and that he had derived this particular moral precept from his reading of Kant.
Kant’s categorical Imperative: Act only according to that maxim whereby you can, at the same time, will that it should become a universal law.

He invoked duty in an effort to explain his version of Kantianism. Arendt responds - this was outrageous on the face of it and also incomprehensible since Kant’s moral philosophy is so closely bound up with mans faculty of judgement which rules out blind obedience.

Satre: the only thing I cannot escape is the need to choose. but the possibility of recreating oneself is rightening - people will try to avoid this freedom. This is ‘bad faith’. 

She rejects the physiological interpretation - Eichmann is neither perverted or sadistic. In her view he just acted according to a brutal law that had become normal. What was his crime according to her was that he failed to think, he failed to judge [he failed to choose’.

Even if eighty million Germans had done as they did that would be no excuse for you - Arendt.

What had become banal was the failure to think. This is Eichmann’s crime - HA

Arendt is saying that we must look to our personal judgement (thinking) rather than the law in order to know how to act because law may turn out to be criminal as in Nazi Germany. In which case we have responsibility to oppose bad law even a responsibility in those conditions be defined as disobedience - indeed sometimes disobedience is exactly our responsibility and this is what Eichmann failed to grasp.