For Hannah Arendt the inability to think, to be thoughtful, and to assume responsibility for one’s actions not only spoke to a regrettable type of civic and political illiteracy but was crucial for creating the formative cultures that permitted authoritarian tendencies to fully consolidate into totalitarian regimes. Absent any residue for moral responsibility, political indignation, and collective resistance, atrocities committed in a systemic way now emerge, in part, from a society in which acts of conscience have become taboo and passive spectatorship normal. Thinking critically and acting independently largely take place in public spheres that instill convictions rather than destroy them and encourage critical capacities rather that shut them down.
Totalitarianism throw together authoritarian and anti-democratic forms that represent a new moment in America history. Economic fundamentalism governs increasing sectors of society, and in doing so it creates draconian policies against women, communities of color, Latinos, immigrants, workers, the elderly, and the economically disadvantaged. Marked by vast inequalities in wealth and power, it imposes massive hardships and suffering for much of the American and international society, and it does so with little regard for the culture of cruelty it advances. Militarization dismisses injustice by reinforcing the immediacy of armed authority and martial law over the rights and diversity inherent to civilian democracy. In this scenario, an increasing number of behaviors are criminalized, militarism feeds the punishing and incarceration state, and a kind of hyper-masculinity parade as the new model for legitimizing aggression and violence in multiple spheres.
Bigot, con man, bully, TV character, Trump has in almost every way become an Imperial Wizard of the spectacle. Trump signifies the marshaling of self-destructive white anxiety, bigotry, and intolerance to the service of an exclusive grid of economic, military, surveillance, police, and corporate self-interest. Rather than view Trump as an eccentric clown, perhaps it is time to portray him in a historical context connected with the West’s totalitarian past, a story that needs to be publicly retold and remembered. By making such connections and telling such stories, we strengthen ourselves and spread the insurgent call to prevent contemporary manifestations form gaining further ground.
The great writer James Baldwin once said we are living in dangerous times, that the society in which we are living is “menaced from within,” and that young people have to “go for broke.” And while he acknowledges that “going for broke” would mean meeting the “most determined resistance,” he argues that it is necessary for young people to rise up and use their energy to reclaim their right to live with dignity, justice, equity, and a sense of possibility. Baldwin got it right, and so do the young people who are now taking up this challenge and, in doing so, are imagining a future free of the menace of totalitarianism that now hangs like a punishing sandstorm over our current political moment. – American at War with Itself
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