America’s Descent into Totalitarianism: The Legacy of Hannah Arendt

Work by Albarluque is licensed under GNU Free Documentation License 1.2

We should take greater urgency in listening to the warnings of philosopher Hannah Arendt in her work “On the Origins of Totalitarianism.” Arendt’s vision of a totalitarian society is not incumbent upon the abolition of constitutional privileges, endless mass-surveillance, curfews, or military juntas. In the eyes of Arendt, a totalitarian society is best defined by a mass culture in which “the distinction between fact and fiction and the distinction between true and false no longer exist.” That said, the United States is entering an era of cultural, social, racial, and economic upheaval that eerily echoes democracies on the brink of autocracy.

Arendt unveils her most prescient insight, saying that mass propagandists discovered that their audience “was ready at all times to believe the worst, no matter how absurd.” Such an insight remains prophetic. It best conveys the United States' current political environment, especially concerning the pervasive spread of fake news outlets, cancel culture, political scandals, the notoriety of 4Chan Alt-Right trolls, black-bloc anarchists, QAnon conspiracies, Twitter mobs, and Russian interference in 2016 U.S. presidential election. 

This passage remains relevant because it comes in place of the many scandals which plague the Trump presidency, whether it be accusations of hush money from Stormy Daniels, the Mueller investigation, and the impeachment inquiry. All of these examples alone should have resulted in widespread public outcry. However, Trump still has an approval rating of 44.4% as of Saturday, October 10th. This data suggests that Trump can perhaps garner a sizable facet of the American public into supporting his candidacy, regardless of accusations of personal vice, criminal felonies, or abuse of presidential powers. This reality alone unveils the pertinence of Arendt's warning, revealing, in some sense, that many Americans are unrelenting in their support for Donald Trump, "ready at all times to believe the worst." 

But why? What is the cause of Trump's widespread support or condemnation? It feels that people, on both sides of the political spectrum, are uncompromising in their hatred or praise of Trump. Cognitive neuroscientists and behavioral psychologists have argued that Trump's widespread support can reduce itself to matters concerning group-behavior. A recent article from Bobby Azarian, a cognitive neuroscientist and columnist in Psychology Today, highlighted that Trump's widespread elation amongst his supporters amounts to a potential factor: "the Dunning Krueger effect." This phenomenon explains that Trump supporters are "completely unaware that they are misinformed," which subsequently creates a "double burden." in which Trump’s supporters express unrelenting support for his actions,  and are not aware of the fanatical tendencies which come out of  it. 

Nevertheless, Azarian's analysis lacks cogency. It fails to consider socio-economic tensions which gave rise to Trump's widespread support. For instance, Trump's use of populist rhetoric, such as his "drain the swamp” motto, resonates deeply with swaths of white, blue-collar voters, who felt abandoned by the political and economic “establishment.” This effect is beyond the scope of group behavior and has broader implications on societal, economic, and cultural issues.

Hannah Arendt foresaw that the ascent of the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany from a variety of socioeconomic disparities.  In her perspective, it came from an ambitious attempt to reconcile novel economic systems, nationalism, and technological advancement. These institutions were mechanisms to ameliorate deeply ingrained structural issues associated with income,wealth inequality, and poverty.  Arendt defines this strange phenomenon as a “classless society”, a world that she warns as “indicative of the dangers implicit in the development of the Western part of the world”.  Arendt elaborates that such a drastic emergence will make “little difference whether totalitarian movements adopt the pattern of Nazism or Bolshevism.”

That said, suffices to say that Trump is a symptom of factors associated with rising levels of income,wealth inequality, and globalization trends. For instance,  through his frequent denunciation of the socio-economic fallout of NAFTA, Trump grappled with a large-scale systemic issue rarely mentioned in mainstream political discourse. Indeed, Trump is correct. NAFTA was “the worst trade deal ever made.” According to the Economic Policy Institute, the effects of NAFTA amounted to a widespread loss of' “2.4 million jobs" in the manufacturing industry between March 2001 and October 2003, and a subsequent loss of "1.2 million jobs" from 2001 onwards. The loss of manufacturing jobs in the United States accelerated to widening gaps of income and weland to the declining relative wages of U.S. workers without a college degree, who made up 72.1% of the workforce in 2001." Rust-belt states such as Michigan, Ohio, and Wisconsin, which relied on manufacturing jobs such as coal-mining and car-production for economic growth and output, felt the most severe drawbacks. 

That said, there is some legitimacy to Trump supporters’ resentment and cynicism, especially when it comes to job outsourcing. Trump dedicated substantial time in conveying a populist message to ex-coal miners, factory workers, and auto-workers in this region. Such a populist ethos could perhaps spearhead Trump to the presidency. 

Nevertheless, through a populist ethos, the United States has paid the price of transforming itself into what political scientist Sheldon Wolin defines as an “inverted totalitarianism”. An inverted totalitarianism is a world in which “party squabbles are occasionally on public display, a world of “frantic and continuous politics among factions of the party, interest groups, competing corporate powers, and rival media concerns”. The United States can transform into a perverse environment where citizens tend to despise factual information, placing emphasis on preserving lies, prejudices, or emotional sentiment. 

In essence, Hannah Arendt’s insights of a totalitarian society serves as a guiding light to understand the underlying factors which give rise to Donald Trump's popularity and the radical fringe movements empowered or repelled by his rhetoric. In order to ensure that the United States drifts away from totalitarianism, American politicians need to take decisive initiative in ameliorating the layered socioeconomic disparities which give rise to Trump’s resurging notoriety.