The Origins of Totalitarianism: with a new introduction by Anne Applebaum
About this ebook
In recent years, The Origins of Totalitarianism has become essential reading as we grapple with the rise of autocrats and tyrannical thought across the globe.
The book begins with the rise of anti-Semitism in central and western Europe in the 1800s and continues with an examination of European colonial imperialism from 1884 to the outbreak of World War I.
Hannah Arendt then explores the institutions and operations of totalitarian movements, focusing on the two genuine forms of totalitarian government in our time, Nazi Germany and Stalinist Russia, which she adroitly recognizes were two sides of the same coin, rather than opposing philosophies of Right and Left. From this vantage point, she discusses the evolution of classes into masses, the role of propaganda in dealing with the nontotalitarian world, the use of terror, and the nature of isolation and loneliness as preconditions for total domination.
This edition includes an introduction by Anne Applebaum—a leading voice on authoritarianism and Russian history—who fears that “once again, we are living in a world that Arendt would recognize.”
About the author
Hannah Arendt (1906–1975) is considered one of the most important and influential thinkers of the twentieth century. A political theorist and philosopher, she is also the author of Crises of the Republic, On Violence, The Life of the Mind, and Men in Dark Times. The Origins of Totalitarianism was first published in 1951.
Anne Applebaum is a staff writer for The Atlantic and a Pulitzer Prize–winning historian. She is also a Senior Fellow at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies and the Agora Institute. She is the author of Twilight of Democracy.
