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asrust.bsky.social
Adam S. Rust
@asrust.bsky.social
3.3K followers 92 following 430 posts
Lawyer, writes on law things, writings have appeared in Liberal Currents and Balls & Strikes, based in San Jose, CA.
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asrust.bsky.social
Adam S. Rust @asrust.bsky.social · 1d
Over the next several weeks I am going to live skeet my evening reading of Hannah Arendt's "The Origins of Totalitarianism" for no particular reason.
Picture of the Library of America edition of Hannah Arendt's "The Origins of Totalitarianism" with a glass and decanter of bourbon adjacent for no particular reason.
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asrust.bsky.social
Adam S. Rust @asrust.bsky.social · 10m
As Arendt's source material discussions relate to Nazi Germany another fascinating detail is how in the decades following WW II published primary sources related to Nazi Germany were slanted towards documents collected for criminal prosecution, i.e., the Nuremberg trials.
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asrust.bsky.social
Adam S. Rust @asrust.bsky.social · 10m
Some fascinating discussions of source material in this preface. It really is astounding how little scholars outside (to say nothing of inside) Soviet Russia knew about the particulars of Stalinism over a decade after his death.
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asrust.bsky.social
Adam S. Rust @asrust.bsky.social · 31m
Distressing data point at the beginning of the preface to the Totalitarianism section. Polling done by the SS showed a German population that (1) basically knew the rough outlines of the Holocaust and (2) supported the Nazi regime anyway.
"1. No doubt, the fact that totalitarian government, its open criminality not withstanding, rests on mass support is very disquieting. It is therefore hardly surprising that scholars as well as statesmen often refuse to recognize it, the former by believing in the magic of propaganda and brainwashing, the latter by simply denying it, as for instance Adenauer did repeatedly. A recent publication of secret reports on German public opinion during the war (from 1939 to 1944), issued by the Security Service of the SS (Meldungen aus dem Reich. Auswahl aus den Geheimen Lageberichten des Sicherheitsdienstes der SS 1939-1944 edited by Heinz Boberach, Neuwied & Berlin, 1965), is very revealing in this respect. It shows, first, that the population was remarkably well informed about all so-called secrets-massacres of Jews in Poland, preparation of the attack on Russia, etc. and, second, the "extent to which the victims of propaganda had remained able to form independent opinions" (pp. XVIII-XIX). However, the point of the matter is that this did not in the least weaken the general support of the Hitler regime. It is quite obvious that mass support for totalitarianism comes neither from ignorance nor from brainwashing."
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asrust.bsky.social
Adam S. Rust @asrust.bsky.social · 38m
4. Arendt draws a direct line from imperialism to secret police apparatuses. She suggests imperialism necessitates a secret police as a supra-government for metropole nations supra-national borders. The USA's post war trajectory continues along the lines Arendt anticipates here.
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asrust.bsky.social
Adam S. Rust @asrust.bsky.social · 38m
3. Arendt suggests that the world of the Cold War is in some ways imperialist dynamics by other means and bears a resemblance to the world political situation before WW I (where some random peripheral event sets the world on fire). Something I really worry about even more now personally.
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asrust.bsky.social
Adam S. Rust @asrust.bsky.social · 38m
2. Imperialism is important to Arendt's conception of totalitarianism because, unlike ancient empires (e.g., Rome or Qin China), it creates the idea of a world politics, which makes control of the globe a conceivable (if not viable) project.
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asrust.bsky.social
Adam S. Rust @asrust.bsky.social · 38m
1. An interesting effect of all of these prefaces being written in 1967, 17 years after the book was initially published is Arendt gets to look at extended trends from end the of Stalinism and the collapse of Nazism, so this clearly right after WW II book contains Vietnam references.
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asrust.bsky.social
Adam S. Rust @asrust.bsky.social · 38m
Some fascinating bits from the imperialism preface on no particular order:
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asrust.bsky.social
Adam S. Rust @asrust.bsky.social · 3h
Continuing where we left off.
Preface to Part Two of Hannah Arendt's "The Origins of Totalitarianism"
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asrust.bsky.social
Adam S. Rust @asrust.bsky.social · 12h
Interested to see if I will agree with that assessment. She clearly has no patience for antisemitism as an intellectual project. Even her citation to an antisemitic scholar in the notes (1) flags him as such (2) notes he is the exception to the rule.
asrust.bsky.social
Adam S. Rust @asrust.bsky.social · 13h
I have ready other Arendt books and she is drawn to hard things it seems. My favorite kind of thinker.
asrust.bsky.social
Adam S. Rust @asrust.bsky.social · 23h
In Arendt's telling, the emergence of robust race theorizing about Jews runs somewhat in tandem with robust race theorizing about, say, black Americans. It is downstream of attempts to give Enlightenment era scientific rigor and fixity to older amorphous folk thinking.
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asrust.bsky.social
Adam S. Rust @asrust.bsky.social · 23h
Again, I don't really know near enough to comment but here is a section of text where Arendt discusses these points.
"This factual constellation gave rise to an optical illusion under which both Jewish and non-Jewish historians have suffered ever since. Historiography "has until now dealt more with the Christian dissociation from the Jews than with the reverse," thus obliterating the otherwise more important fact that Jewish..." "...dissociation from the Gentile world, and more specifically from the Christian environment, has been of greater relevance for Jewish history than the reverse, for the obvious reason that the very survival of the people as an identifiable entity depended upon such voluntary separation and not, as was currently assumed, upon the hostility of Christians and non-Jews. Only in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, after emancipation and with the spread of assimilation, has antisemitism played any role in the conservation of the people, since only then did Jews aspire to being admitted to non-Jewish society."
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asrust.bsky.social
Adam S. Rust @asrust.bsky.social · 23h
2. Arendt also seems to suggest that Antisemitism as a unifying feature of Jewish experience emerges in the 19th century as some Jews try to assimilate into Gentile culture.
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asrust.bsky.social
Adam S. Rust @asrust.bsky.social · 23h
1. Jewish marginalization from Gentile culture is a product of the Jewish desire for a distinct community as it is for Gentiles to keep Jews out of their daily lives.
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asrust.bsky.social
Adam S. Rust @asrust.bsky.social · 23h
This intro to the Antisemitism section of the book make some claims I feel super wary endorsing without more knowledge on the topic. Below are a few:
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asrust.bsky.social
Adam S. Rust @asrust.bsky.social · 23h
After trashing Antisemitic historians generally, Arendt carves out an exception and I am vaguely recollecting relying on this scholar got her in a lot of trouble.
"7. The only exception is the antisemitic historian Walter Frank, the head of the Nazi Reichsinstitut für Geschichte des Neuen Deutschlands and the editor of nine volumes of Forschungen zur Judenfrage, 1937-1944. Especially Frank's own contributions can still be consulted with profit."
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asrust.bsky.social
Adam S. Rust @asrust.bsky.social · 23h
From Arendt's intro to her section on Anti-Semitism. One recurrent theme in the intro is the constituent parts of totalitarianism are things thoughtful Europeans considered beneath engagement.
"Moreover, what is true for the history of antisemitism, that it fell into the hands of non-Jewish crackpots and Jewish apologetics, and was carefully avoided by reputable historians, is true, mutatis mutandis, for nearly all elements that later crystallized in the novel totalitarian phenomenon; they had hardly been noticed by either learned or public opinion because they belonged to a subterranean stream of European history where, hidden from the light of the public and the attention of enlightened men, they had been able to gather an entirely unexpected virulence."
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asrust.bsky.social
Adam S. Rust @asrust.bsky.social · 1d
One observation Arendt makes in the intro is how absurd it is that Anti-Semitism, of all political flashpoints, led the world into totalitarianism. If you had told me immigration would lead us to where we are now 15 years ago I wouldn't have believed you.
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asrust.bsky.social
Adam S. Rust @asrust.bsky.social · 1d
True understanding requiring facing up to the parts we don't want to understand is an important intellectual north star during trying times.
"The conviction that everything that happens on earth must be comprehensible to man can lead to interpreting history by commonplaces. Comprehension does not mean denying the outrageous, deducing the unprecedented from precedents, or explaining phenomena by such analogies and generalities that the impact of reality and the shock of experience are no longer felt. It means, rather, examining and bearing consciously the burden which our century has placed on us-neither denying its existence nor submitting meekly to its weight. Comprehension, in short, means the unpremeditated, attentive facing up to, and resisting of, reality-whatever it may be."
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asrust.bsky.social
Adam S. Rust @asrust.bsky.social · 1d
Love a good opening epigraph. Translation in second picture via Google Translate.
"Weder dem Vergangenen anheimfallen noch dem Zukünftigen. Es kommt darauf an, ganz gegenwärtig zu sein. - KARL JASPERS" "Neither falling prey to the past nor to the future. What matters is being completely present. KARL JASPERS"
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asrust.bsky.social
Adam S. Rust @asrust.bsky.social · 1d
Over the next several weeks I am going to live skeet my evening reading of Hannah Arendt's "The Origins of Totalitarianism" for no particular reason.
Picture of the Library of America edition of Hannah Arendt's "The Origins of Totalitarianism" with a glass and decanter of bourbon adjacent for no particular reason.
1 5 27
asrust.bsky.social
Adam S. Rust @asrust.bsky.social · 29d
In memoriam, here is my favorite Robert Redford anecdote.
Text: “I interviewed hundreds, maybe thousands, of men,” Nichols told an enthusiastic crowd at the Directors Guild of America Theatre in New York, in 2003, at a screening of The Graduate. He even discussed the role with his friend Robert Redford, who was eager for the part. “I said, ‘You can’t play it. You can never play a loser.’ And Redford said, ‘What do you mean? Of course I can play a loser.’ And I said, ‘O.K., have you ever struck out with a girl?’ and he said, ‘What do you mean?’ And he wasn’t joking.”
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asrust.bsky.social
Adam S. Rust @asrust.bsky.social · Sep 9
Just watched "The Bodyguard" (1992) for the first time a few days ago and I cannot stop thinking about the screwdriver Kevin Costner pours during his dark night of the soul. youtu.be/g1rRXO1qiQs?...
Stolichnaya+Orange Juice=Kevin Costner
YouTube video by Prodopotter
youtu.be
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Reposted by Adam S. Rust
nicholasgrossman.bsky.social
Nicholas Grossman @nicholasgrossman.bsky.social · Sep 7
The best one-line criticism of these sort of Democrats that I’ve heard is “they believe they deserve an A in politics.”
jamellebouie.net
jamelle @jamellebouie.net · Sep 7
real problem that democratic politicians fetishize being “responsible” and “the grown ups”
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