This is not a lesson that’s been learned. Look at how deeply liberals underestimated all of them, and the appeal they would have and continue having, even when they failed the very movements they promised to help. And look around today, it’s still happening - look at Putin, look at Trump, look at Xi. Arendt was the master theorist of liberalism’s most fundamental blind spot, its inability to account for or even understand the appeal of its shadow, of illiberalism. That’s how Anne Applebaum, the Pulitzer Prize winning historian and journalist at The Atlantic, begins her introduction to a new edition of Hannah Arendt’s 1951 classic, “The Origins of Totalitarianism.” Why do people keep going back to this book? What is it about Arendt that matters, and that keeps mattering decade after decade? I think it’s this. So many of the seemingly novel illnesses that afflict modern society are really just resurgent cancers, diagnosed and described long ago. So much of what we imagine to be new is old.
The book was singled out for praise on both sides of the Atlantic, and is considered by the author to be his most prescient effort in social theory.Transcript Anne Applebaum on What Liberals Misunderstand About Authoritarianism The writer discusses what Hannah Arendt’s “The Origins of Totalitarianism” reveals about the fragility of liberal democracy. This work will be of special interest to political scientists, intellectual historians, and sociologists. It shows not only what might have helped the older generation avert the catastrophe of Nazism, but also how today's generation can prevent another such catastrophe. The End of Economic Man is a book of great social import. He explains the tragedy of Europe as the loss of political faith, resulting from the political alienation of the European masses. The End of Economic Man is a social and political effort to explain the subjective consequences of the social upheavals caused by warfare.ĭrucker concentrates on one specific historical event: the breakdown of the social and political structure of Europe which culminated in the rise of Nazi totalitarianism to mastery over Europe. Drucker provides a special addition to the massive literature on existentialism and alienation since World War II. In some ways, this book anticipated by more than a decade the existentialism that came to dominate the European political mood in the postwar period. Drucker explains and interprets fascism and Nazism as fundamental revolutions. In The End of Economic Man, long recognized as a cornerstone work, Peter F.
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