Hannah Arendt (1906–1975) was one of the most influential thinkers of the 20th century.
On an individual level, Arendt shows how social isolation drives populism and susceptibility to propaganda – and most chillingly, how dictatorship and mass hatred can prevail when ‘the distinction between fact and fiction, and the distinction between true and false, no longer exist.’ It considers the ever-present undercurrents of antisemitism – from pogroms in Middle Europe to the Dreyfus Affair that divided France, prefiguring Hitler’s Final Solution – along with the industrialised cruelty of 19th-century colonialism in Africa, the rise of empires after the First World War, and the use of political racism to justify the occupation of nations and the mass displacement of people. In its analysis of the conditions that led to the Nazi and Soviet regimes, the book covers a vast amount of historical ground. With urgency and moral conviction, Arendt drives home the message that freedom is fragile, and no democracy can ignore the terrible lessons of the past.
The Origins of Totalitarianism is a gripping and unsettling read. The Origins of Totalitarianism won the Scholarly, Academic & Reference Books category at the British Book Production and Design Awards 2022. It includes an exclusive introduction by Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Anne Applebaum – a leading voice on authoritarianism and Russian history – who fears that ‘once again, we are living in a world that Arendt would recognise.’ This is the first-ever illustrated edition, with famous propaganda images and documentary photography from the USSR and the Third Reich. Arendt – with the insight of a Jewish refugee who fled Hitler’s Germany – lays bare the brutality of Nazism and Stalinism, and seeks to advance our understanding of the forces of antisemitism and imperialism that forged them.
Published shortly after the Second World War, Hannah Arendt’s study of state tyranny stands as a powerful warning from history, and as one of the 20th century’s most important works of political history. In an age of strong-man leaders, mass populist movements and media disinformation, The Origins of Totalitarianism has soared back into the public consciousness and become essential reading for our times.
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