I don’t much like to share the same content here and on Instagram, but this one feels urgent a
I don’t much like to share the same content here and on Instagram, but this one feels urgent and relevant to the times we are living in…On documentary ‘Vita Activa: The spirit of Hannah Arendt’ :Hannah Arendt was a German-Jewish political theorist & philosopher, an original & unclassifiable thinker; she was fiercely attacked & casted out by the Jewish community after she wrote “Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil” in 1963. Adolf Eichmann, a high-ranking Nazi captured & on trial at the time.She was accused of controversially using the phrase “the banality of evil” to characterize Eichmann’s actions and in turn downplaying the monstrosity of his crime. Arendt argued that Eichmann failed to exercise his capacity of thinking (his Dumbness), of having an internal dialogue which would have permitted self-awareness of the evil nature of his deeds. It was not the presence of hatred that enabled Eichmann to perpetrate the genocide, but the absence of the imaginative capacities that would have made the human and moral dimensions of his activities tangible to him. Another horrifying revelation is that Donald Trump is dangerously similar to the Fascist ideal Hitler had once preached.One of Arendt’s concerns was the ways certain totalitarian tendencies and attitudes could persist in democratic societies, the film displayed chilling implications against the current state of American politics & its imperialism attitude. One writer wrote: “Hate speech is a key ingredient of the fascist dictator’s rhetorical mix. In a speech the director shows us, Hitler’s approach is strikingly Trumpian: a few nonspecific references to the enemies (in Trump’s case, he specifically called the good people of Mexico murderers & rapists) who are besieging and undermining the Reich, blended into a glowing portrait of a paradisiacal future of full employment and universal prosperity, dominated by a rising generation of healthy, strong and “peace-loving” young Germans. It was relentlessly upbeat, and strongly resonant of Trump’s vow to “make America great again”.• Hannah Arendt - photo credit unknown • Hitler, Face of Terror, 1933 - Erwin Blumenfeld layered on top of Donald Trump -- source link
#vita activa#hannah arendt#totalitarianism#fascism#genocide#donald trump#american politics