Hannah Arendt Documentary Warns of Totalitarianism

By Eric George Tauber

CINCINNATI, Ohio — Hannah Arendt was a name I’d heard many times, but I didn’t really know her story. So when the opportunity to review a documentary film about her presented itself, I took it. Hannah Arendt: Facing Tyranny is a co-production of Jeff Bieber Productions and LOOKS Film. This film details an in-depth chronology of Arendt’s life and observations of the world around her. I won’t go into every detail. That’s what the film is for. Rather, I would like to discuss her ideas and why they are still important today.

Hannah Arendt was born to a secular Jewish family in 1906. Her mother was a musician, and her father was a scholar. The Arendt home was filled with music and literature, with bookshelves from floor to ceiling. While they weren’t particularly  religious, they never lost their Jewishness. Arendt saw assimilation not as a way out of the ghettos or shtetlach, but as a war within oneself. 

Arendt wrote: “If one is attacked as a Jew, one must defend oneself as a Jew, not as a German, not as a world citizen, not as an upholder of the rights of man, but very specifically, asking, ‘What can I do?’ ”

Arendt watched German society transform from a proud and sophisticated nation to one defeated in The Great War. The weaknesses of the Weimar Republic were easy to exploit. Many Nazi supporters were folks who had never been politically or socially engaged before. They were poorly educated with no depth of understanding, but they knew how they felt. They were angry, hurt and looking for someone to blame. This new movement gave them a sense of belonging to something big and exciting. It took them from the bottom of society and made them the movers and shakers of the world. 

Arendt: “The ideal subject was not the convinced Nazi, but people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction no longer existed. A most cherished virtue is loyalty to the leader who -like a talisman- assures that ultimate victory of lie and fiction over truth and reality.”

Educated conservatives of the time knew that Hitler was dangerous, but they hoped to harness his strong, dull-witted followers. Hitler played them against each other, becoming Chancellor. Once in power, he shut down all media outlets except one: Der Stürmer, his vehicle for propaganda. Hitler also surrounded himself with people whose only quality to recommend them was their unequivocal loyalty to him.

Arendt: “Propaganda provided the foundations for building totalitarian power. The Nazis translated the propaganda lies of the movement into a functioning reality. Totalitarianism replaces all first-rate talents with crackpots and fools whose lack of intelligence and creativity is still the best guarantee of their loyalty. The Nazis act as though the world were dominated by the Jews and needed a counter-conspiracy to defend itself.”

Universities quickly bent the knee, becoming instruments of the Reich by forcing their Jewish students and faculty out. The eminent philosopher Martin Heidegger gave the Nazis his full cooperation. Hannah Arendt, who had been Heidegger’s lover when she was his student, felt utterly betrayed.

Seeing the writing on the wall, Arendt fled Germany to Paris in 1933 and then to New York City in 1941. Arendt believed in the ideals of America, becoming a US citizen. “There really is such a thing as freedom here. … [US] citizens are united by one thing: simple consent to the Constitution.”

She wrote The Origins of Totalitarianism about the Nazi and Soviet regimes, a book that was published in 1951.

Then came Joe McCarthy and his witch hunts for pinko-commies. To Arendt’s ears, the anti-communist rhetoric had a chillingly familiar ring. Once again, she heard free speech stifled and academia cowed by fear. The greatest threats to any republic come not from without, and not from subversives, but from those in power.

Arendt: “If everybody always lies to you, the consequence is not that you believe the lies, but rather that nobody believes anything any longer. And the people that no longer believe anything cannot make up its mind. It is deprived not only of its capacity to act, but also of its capacity to think and to judge. And with such a people, you can then do what you please.”

Arendt wrote dire warnings that we would do well to heed. The film doesn’t directly tie Arendt’s observations to today’s politics, but the parallels are hard to miss. In America today, fact-based media is under attack and universities are being brought to heel. Corruption is at its highest levels, and the cabinet is filled with incompetents, drunkards and brain-eating worms. Immigrants, both legal and illegal, are being rounded up by jack-booted thugs and shipped off to a hell-hole in El Salvador just as Jews, Roma and others were sent to Poland by the Nazis. 

How did we get here? The poorly educated of our own society have been manipulated by propaganda to prop up a new talisman, proudly sporting his hats, flags and gaudy shoes. They sing his praises and cheer his incoherent speeches. They pay no heed to facts and data, but to whatever makes them feel emboldened. Their vote is not based on their economic interests, but on their insecurities and their need to feel a part of something bigger than themselves.

And once again, Jews are being attacked by both the far-right and the far-left who have been lied to and manipulated by propaganda. 

The biggest question is: What can we do to speak up and fight back?

Hannah Arendt: Facing Tyranny is available for viewing on Vimeo.

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Eric George Tauber, a former San Diegan, is a freelance writer based in Cincinnati.