Everything melts away like butter in the sun: Hannah Arendt on McCarthyism
Hannah Arendt to Karl Jaspers, May 13, 1953:
You probably know a lot [about the Second Red Scare] from the papers. Can you see from them how far the disintegration has gone and with what breathtaking speed it has occurred? And up to now hardly any resistance. Everything melts away like butter in the sun….It is essentially impossible to consider any specific parts of the society as set apart from it, for even where the Congressional investigating committees aren’t sticking in their dirty noses, an extremely effective self-censorship takes place. The editor of a newspaper or a magazine, for example, or the director of a business or the professors at a university will quietly conduct a purge….It all functions without any application of force, without any terror.
3 Comments
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Stephen Zielinski
There is Terror. The terror refers to the loss of work and thus of the ability to provide for oneself and one’s own but also to the ostracism that comes with the stigma of being labeled a traitor, an other. For some, it’s a long fall. For others, the fall isn’t that long but restitution threats any one who falls.
That’s a kind of terrorism. It’s not the terrorism of the legal scholars. It is the terrorism felt by the weak mostly.
Arendt’s theoretical commitments prevent her from recognizing this brute fact
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"Ned"
Just a simple “thank you” for your writing and blog posting.
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ed
Perhaps a bit disjointed, the Hannah Arendt observation reminds me of the “rather Dead than
Red discussion ” . Just substitute Oppressed for Red. Then take away all the “ism'” that chain our perceptions or the Reality.
Then I think I understand better the meaning of another simple observation”All men are born free, but everywhere are in chains”. Hello, human nature.
And I then think the Death vs Oppression choice could have, and can can still be, avoided; thinking about how easily the paralyzed Democratic Party could have avoided repeating the cycle that Russo observed (about human nature) by taking the wind out of Republican sails. Certainly there’s plenty of smart people can devise how to do it.
The two Parties are both captured by poles, the Democrats believe their rhetoric while the Republicans don’t.