Origins of Totalitarianism

Origins of Totalitarianism

Hannah Arendt

Hannah Arendt’s The Origins of Totalitarianism (1951) traces how democratic societies can devolve into authoritarianism through the normalization of emergency measures. Though she never uses the term “state of exception,” her work foreshadows it, showing how temporary suspensions of law — such as the Nazi use of the 1933 Reichstag Fire Decree — became permanent fixtures of governance. Arendt roots this process in European colonialism, antisemitism, and the collapse of the nation-state, which left stateless people outside legal protection.

She emphasizes that totalitarianism advances not just through the application of brute force; rather, it relies on the incremental dismantling of legal barriers, the atomization of society, and the manipulation of mass psychology through propaganda and terror. Totalitarianism, she argues, thrives not merely through top-down coercion but via the disintegration of communal moral frameworks and the isolation of the citizen.

There is a wealth of online resources with more background and discussion of Arendt’s seminal work. Bernard E. Harcourt has a review of the book here at the Columbia Center for Contemporary Critical Thought. The Hannah Arendt Center for Politics and Humanities at Bard College also has a 12-part virtual reading group on The Origins of Totalitarianism, with the first session available here. This page from the Library of Congress offers even more resources on Arendt and her writings.