It’s not just her racism, which was really horrible even for the time, it’s the way that she was a zealously driven anticommunist to the point that she had to use her racism to justify why the “totalitarianism” she observed in the commonalities between the USSR and Nazi Germany didn’t also describe Western liberal countries. Spoiler alert: every crime you can accuse the USSR of committing was done an order of magnitude more by the British Empire.
I trace back the infantile anti-authoritarian arguments of today to Arendt. The fantasy of the Orientals being subhumans that just have to submit themselves to an authoritarian government, as opposed to our free and democratic Western governments, is incredibly pervasive even in the left.
(also true of Orwell)
It’s not just her racism, which was really horrible even for the time, it’s the way that she was a zealously driven anticommunist to the point that she had to use her racism to justify why the “totalitarianism” she observed in the commonalities between the USSR and Nazi Germany didn’t also describe Western liberal countries. Spoiler alert: every crime you can accuse the USSR of committing was done an order of magnitude more by the British Empire.
I trace back the infantile anti-authoritarian arguments of today to Arendt. The fantasy of the Orientals being subhumans that just have to submit themselves to an authoritarian government, as opposed to our free and democratic Western governments, is incredibly pervasive even in the left.