Ideology and Terror

A Novel Form of Government

Bibliographic Data

ID6402993
AuthorsHannah Arendt (corresponding author)
Year1953
Volume15
Issue3
Pages303-327
Publication date1953-07-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueThe Review of Politics (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0034-6705 • E-ISSN: 1748-6858
PublisherCambridge University Press (CUP) (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1017/s0034670500001510
OpenAlexW2157789294
LanguageEN
Citations received57

The following considerations have grown out of a study of the origins, the elements and the functioning of that novel form of government and domination which we have come to call totalitarian. Wherever it rose to power, it developed entirely new political institutions and destroyed all social, legal and political traditions of the country. No matter what the specifically national tradition or the particular spiritual source of its ideology, totalitarian government always transformed classes into masses, supplanted the party system, not by one-party dictatorships, but by a mass movement, shifted the center of power from the army to the police, and established a foreign policy openly directed toward world domination. Present totalitarian governments have developed from one-party systems; whenever these became truly totalitarian, they started to operate according to a system of values so radically different from all others, that none of our traditional legal, moral, or common sense utilitarian categories could any longer help us to come to terms with, or judge, or predict its course of action

Action (physics · Democracy · Dictatorship · Foreign policy · Government (linguistics · Ideology · Law and economics · Political economy · Political science · Politics · Power (physics · Sociology · Law · Philosophy · Terrorism, Counterterrorism, and Political Violence

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