Hanna Arendt

Philosophy Forums Society, Government, and Economics
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Here’s the problem with Hanna Arendt. And, mind you, I have not read Hanna Arendt, and it is most possible I would change my estimation if I did.

In a situation where a militarized government of a fanaticized population initiate a policy of systematic genocide, it is basically tantamount to treason to blame the targeted population for any reaction any of its members might have.

If a German with no known Jewish family or ancestry becomes an informant or an administrator for the genocide, then we can talk about it and mention how that person compares to a cockroach. But if a Jewish person, a person who is and knows he or she is being targeted for extermination (and, in the words of someone or othr, if they didn’t know there was a genocide, why the need to risk life and family hiding Jewish refugees?) has any reaction at all, including active or even enthusiastic collaboration, even if the collaboration is in earnest, this cannot possibly in any conceivable way be laid at their door. First of all, by definition, in any case, a Jewish person or entity cannot have initiated or led a Jewish genocide.

For Arendt to analyze evil, and conclude that the reaction of a population targeted for genocide can make them evil, is essencially to take a nazi position. Now, I am not saying Arendt was a nazi, an intellectual must risk all mistakes, but that is the position her excursion led her to. Unavoidably. It is exactly equal to a rapist blaming the raped because they did not kick or scream, or decided to deal with it by pretending they enjoyed it, even pretending to themselves, even falling in love with the rapist, even protecting the rapist and laying down their lives for them.

It’s not that I don’t understand how Arendt wound up there. I myself have come into contact with Jewish Europeans who have basically adopted a nazi ideology. But enough subtlety is required of an intellectual to blame the person for communism only, for socialism, which envelops red communism as much as fascism, and it is a contradiciton in terms to lay at that person’s feet any culpability in regards to the genocide. And maybe that is where Arendt’s bane is, that famous intellectualist tendency to blame anything but the socialism, to throw anything under the bus but it. Better that a raped woman be guilty of her own rape than a single fault be found in socialism. Again, have not read Arendt, but would lay down money on this being the reason.

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yah, it’s best not to talk about things you know nothing about…

Kropotkin

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At times not knowing about some specific instance can not bar the essential simplicity hiding beneath the surface, a kind of pinball redux rollback into the small holes that prevent only a pinball wizard to understand. No offense here.

Of realizing wider implications of situations far ago and longed away mysteries that are contained almost as if drawn by invisible ink, of trying to clear 12 pins as a redoubled consequence.

Denial of this ultimate but never configured image is really a cause of mystery; or the other way around.

Ringing in truth the varient assumption of the function of musical representation underlying it’s very configuration.

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So I finally gathered the courage to begin watching the movie Hanna Arendt, which was what prompted this thread.

She is at Adolph Eichman’s trial now, she has seen it go on for a few days, and is talking to a coleague about what she perceives. She mentions how much it strikes her that he just is a kind of feeble man speaking in pathetic beaurocratic language.

I presume this will eventually lead to the idea of the banality of evil, that it is office creatures that perpetrate these attrocities.

But it is a naivete on her part. For my friends, everything. For my enemies, administrative jargon.

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And, actually, who gives a fuck?

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Would You believe some people do

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I believe people prefer to ignore the obvious when it conflicts with alternate precious beliefs.

It’s even unfair that it should be Eichman. They should have chosen some random German civilian who was only vaguely involved and hung him.

Choosing Eichman was already some kind of consession.

And by the way, I am not for just killing every random nazi and collaborator. For one thing, many of them made very useful contributions to American intelligence and engineering. But if you are going to make a symbolic statement, hang the dude who simply passed a letter from one hand to another.

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The nazis where, whatever else, socialists. No amount of propaganda can bury the understanding of this truth in the minds of every single person considering fascism. If they have even a vague fondness for socialism, they will seek for ways to excuse what happened. No socialist could have been that fucked. They don’t want to tarnish the name.

It was the bureacracy, it was the upbringing, it was revenge on France, it was national pride.

Anything but “a socialist, in his capacity as socialist, ordered the extermination of the Jewish people, and was obeyed by socialists, in their capacity as socialists.”

It doesn’t mean the genocide was a socialist thing. That’s the point. It means that socialists believe, truly, that any socialist will have a secret goodness in their hearts that would prevent them from a simple decision to exterminate a group of people.

Jewish socialists, even Jewish nazis, can have not a single thing laid at their door. It was people that did it. It is not my claim that socialism convicts them, but socialists’ belief that socialism exonerates them.

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Even the idea that Adolph Hitler was evil. No. He was a pretty run of the mill person. Not particularly smart, not particularly strong willed. Just willing enough to play the part.

They’re gonna blame Hitler now? Antisemites hadn’t been rolling in shit for long before? Rommel wouldn’t have done it?

Please.

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If anything, they chose Hitler because he was a clown, and being a clown, he was a useful way to deflect responsibility.

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By the way, I’m not saying anything but I’m just saying, the only significant native non-Jewish German resistance to nazis and the holocaust, even in cases where they were themselves antisemites, were catholic Germans.

Many of the victims of Kim Philby’s betrayal, rounded up and sent to the camps, were German aristocrat millionaires who had every reason to become nazis and be very succesful members, except that they were Catholics, so instead they set up secret resistance networks and smuggled out as many Jewish refugees as they could, as well as feeding intel to the allies.

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I’m happy to see that the bad guy Republican “hateful American” character in the movie agrees with me almost to the word.

I guess it takes an intellectual to make an affair of the obvious.

We reiterate once again and strongly that we have nothing but respect for Hanna Arendt.

Jut because you analyze the moves of a great chess player and find mistakes doesn’t mean you are any less taken aback.

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Maybe I’ve been unfair. Maybe it is not wholy the socialism thing, but having been part of the process, and even in a camp. It could fairly have given her a disposition to implicate Jewish leaders who were involved in the process. From her perspective, it would not be out of place. I still count the publishing of it in that way as a mistake, with all the previous provisions and clauses.

What her paper amounted to was a judgement of the holocaus and its conduct, and in the official sentence, Jewish elements were implicated. This is incorrect.

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No it is not “incorrect”.
Not sure why you want to bring in “socialism” to the conversation, since that plays no part except that socialists, as well as homosexuals, disabled, and other ethnic categories were also holocaust victims.

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The movie even includes a nice little apology for Heidegger.

For fuck’s sake.

Socialists.

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Your inability to read is not my problem.

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Have you heard of reading a book?

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And your inability to think, dictated by your political convictions.

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Yes, it’s most excellent. When were you planning to start?

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Aside from the pop science aisle at the newspaper stand.