Nationalist and authoritarian tendencies in the interwar period and today: What would Hannah Arendt say
2018
Abstract
The paper presents the analyses of the causes of the rise of authoritarian and totalitarian regimes in the interwar period, as provided by Hannah Arendt in her works The Origin of Totalitarianism and Vita Activa. In particular, it focuses on the problem of economizing of politics, on the emergence of a nation state and the concept of the nation associated with it, on the phenomenon of the mob and its relation to capital, and on the disintegration of common sense.
A comparison with some analogous contemporary phenomena and tendencies shows how alarmingly relevant Arendt's analyses are today.