Essays in Understanding, 1930-1954: Formation, Exile, and Totalitarianism by Hannah Arendt

Author:Hannah Arendt
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Tags: New
ISBN: 9780307787033
Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Published: 2011-04-13T07:00:00+00:00

The peculiar political unreality and traditionalism among anti-Stalinists seems to be closely connected with the general political situation in this country. All totalitarian movements, but Bolshevism even more today than Nazism a decade ago, are completely absent from the American domestic scene. All that Bolshevism actually means today is a possible menace from abroad, helped by domestic espionage, with the result that anti-Stalinists think more and more exclusively in terms of foreign policy. Since they have no contact with and little lively interest in politics as the realm of the statesman, they have degenerated into armchair strategists who marshal the forces of the world for and against Stalin. The new emphasis on foreign policy is what chiefly distinguishes present-day anti-Stalinism from earlier forms of anti-totalitarianism like Trotskyism or anti-fascism. Although fascist groups in this country were never very strong, they existed nevertheless. The fact, moreover, that totalitarian and partially totalitarian dictatorships of the fascist brand had sometimes been helped to power by the native bourgeoisie (the significance of which was greatly overrated by all Marxists) led American anti-fascists, rightly or wrongly, to believe “it can happen here,” which naturally gave them a personal stake in the struggle and revealed to them certain possibilities for action at home. A fascist danger from abroad, on the other hand, was never taken very seriously, not even during the war; as a matter of fact, victory in the war was decided the moment the United States joined it, and Americans, with very few and insignificant exceptions, knew it.

In this respect, the situation in Europe and, indeed, almost all over the world is the very opposite. Bolshevism is not just an outside threat from Russia and her satellites. The danger of a so-called fifth column is much more real than the danger of mere espionage, and the fact is that no Nazi-inspired party, from the anti-Semitic groups in Rumania to the Doriot outfit in France,* could have competed in loyalty, reliability, and efficient supervision with the Moscow-directed Communist parties.

Therefore, mere anti-Stalinism outside the United States has a definite nationalist flavor, and has led many good people, in France, for example, into the De Gaulle movement, for, despite the definite totalitarian potentialities and authoritarian certainties of a De Gaulle government, they prefer, even when they are aware of these dangers, a native dictatorship to a foreign one. On the other hand, Europeans of distinction and integrity, whose biographical and intellectual backgrounds would very likely make them uncompromising anti-Stalinists in America, have shown an unpleasant inclination to become fellow-travelers and a definite hostility to the American brand of anti-Stalinism.

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