Explaining Hannah Arendt's "The Origins of Totalitarianism": Ideology, Terror, and Loneliness

Who was Hannah Arendt? 

Hannah Arendt (1906–1975) was a German-born political theorist and philosopher renowned for her profound analyses of power, authority, and totalitarianism. After fleeing Nazi Germany, she settled in the United States, where she became a prominent academic and public intellectual. Her influential works, including The Origins of Totalitarianism and The Human Condition, continue to shape contemporary political thought.

Totalitarianism: A New Form Of Government

Nowadays we hear the word "totalitarian regime" and "totalitarianism" thrown around a lot. The origin of this term is actually linked to Mussolini, who came up with the term "totalitario" to describe the Italian fascist state. But Hannah Arendt was one of the first thinkers to do a major, and in-depth analysis of the term, in her book The Origins of Totalitarianism. Totalitarianism, she argued, was a new form of government, distinct from any forms of government that came before it. For Arendt, totalitarianism was a type of government that involved a few key components:

 

 1. A leading ideology.

2. Terror.

3. Following higher laws of history than simple constitutional laws, what she called the "laws of motion".

4. It preyed upon the loneliness of individuals.

5. It sought to isolate individuals.

Let's go through each of these one by one to understand her idea of totalitarianism. 

Leading Ideology & The Laws of Motion

Totalitarianism requires an ideology. Arendt gives the examples of Nazism (National Socialism) and Communism as examples of ideologies in a totalitarian system. These ideologies have certain goals that each one wants to reach. For Nazism, this is the goal of Social Darwinism: the extermination of what the ideology believes are inferior races. For Marxism, the end goal is a classless, stateless society. These are the Laws of Motion that the ideologies follow, the Law of Nature (Social Darwinism, i.e. survival of the fittest races, for Nazism) and the Law of History (Dialectical and Historical Materialism for Marxism, i.e. creating the neccessary material conditions for a communist society).

 

Arendt says that to achieve these goals/Laws of Motion faster than through the natural progression of history, terror is needed. 

The role of terror in totalitarianism

Terror helps facilitate the neccessary conditions to achieve the end goals of totalitarian ideologies quicker than they would otherwise have occured if the regimes simply allowed things to play out naturally. Arendt argues that for Nazism, terror is needed to bring about the deaths of the inferior races identified in the ideology, and for Marxism/Communism, terror helps execute classes that exploit workers and exploited classes under capitalism and all other previous economic systems. As Arendt explains, under totalitarianism, terror “executes the death sentences pronounced by Nature or History” without waiting for natural progression.

This is what separates totalitarian regimes from dictatorships or tyrannies. Tyranny represses opponents to hold power. Totalitarianism goes further: it atomises society by isolating and paralysing individuals, destroying both private and public life. The goal is not just obedience but absolute domination where the very concept of spontaneity and human action is eliminated.
 

Isolation and loneliness: the preconditions of totalitarianism

According to Arendt, loneliness is the fundamental experience that makes people susceptible to totalitarianism. Isolation (political powerlessness) precedes it, but loneliness is deeper: it is the loss of connection to a shared world or community. In modern mass society, uprooted individuals often experience this kind of loneliness. Without strong social bonds or shared values, individuals are more easily seduced by ideologies that promise absolute certainty and purpose.

Ideology, in totalitarianism, offers what Arendt calls a “truer” reality, independent of human experience, often with a rigid logical structure that allows no contradictions. This creates a perverse kind of certainty, where followers willingly surrender their individuality in order to belong to something seemingly greater.
 

Power and violence: Arendt’s broader political theory

Arendt’s later work, particularly *On Violence*, further explores the nature of power in contrast to violence. She famously argued that power and violence are opposites: where one rules, the other disappears. Power comes from collective action and consent, while violence is a sign that true power has failed. In totalitarian regimes, the reliance on terror and violence is a symptom of their need to maintain control without genuine power rooted in popular support.
 

Conclusion: Arendt’s legacy

Hannah Arendt’s analysis of totalitarianism remains one of the most profound attempts to understand the horrors of the twentieth century. Her insistence that totalitarianism was not just an extreme form of tyranny, but something entirely new and uniquely destructive, changed political theory forever.

She warned that the conditions which make totalitarianism possible—mass loneliness, ideological fanaticism, and the breakdown of shared political life—remain present in modern societies.

In the end, as Arendt writes in The Human Condition, every new birth represents a chance for a new beginning—a reminder of the enduring human capacity for action and renewal.

Bibliography

Arendt, H. (1951). The Origins of Totalitarianism. New York, NY: Harcourt, Brace.

Arendt, H. (1958). The Human Condition. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.

Arendt, H. (1970). On Violence. New York, NY: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich.

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