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Totalitarianism

Introduction

Totalitarianism is a political ideology that is characterized by the government enforcing total control over all aspects of the lives of the citizens or her subjects. The government permits no freedom to the people, seeks to take charge of all aspects of human life, and exercises a strong central rule to the subjects. The system was initially designed in a positive motive and bore the slogan “Everything within the state, nothing outside the state, nothing against the state”. However, the concept was gradually corrupted to evoke the feeling of extreme authoritarianism where the rights of the subjects and the human dignity to all are compromised. Hannah Arendt’s article on the new guarantee was triggered by the resultant repercussion of the Second World War and the holocaust. Many people were left without a state identity and left as destitute refugees both in their original native countries and in foreign countries. Arendt believed strongly threat today’s political regimes are consequences of the political philosophies of the western traditions. She saw refugees as the bad fruits of the current political ideologies and hence she challenges the purpose and effectiveness of the current political practices and thoughts. By her moving away from the concept of inalienable or natural rights and focusing on the right of individual membership within a community for the purpose if human dignity, she instigates a favorable foundation for human rights. Why does human dignity needs a new political guarantee as proposed by Hannah Arendt and what necessitates the need? This essay therefore intends to investigate whether in the light of totalitarianism human rights and dignity suffer compromise and hence project the reasons why human dignity needs a new guarantee

Discussion

In the article ‘Origin of totalitarianism’, Arendt reasons that the human dignity requires some guarantee and this is possible through new political principle. This is after the nineteenth century idea of peaceful cosmopolitan in the respect of human rights was destroyed. Arendt says that the state of being a refugee is best understood from different perspectives; physical, social and political displacement of an individual. The lack of a physical place to live in and settle defines displacement, asylum seeker and the refugee state of human beings. However, other aspects also come in handy such as the deprivation of an individual right to action and to freedom of opinion. The collective sum of the modern displacement and the degradation are what Arendt terms as ‘wordlessness’. She sighted the remedy to the state of wordlessness as being embedded on the need to revisit the foundations of ethics of human rights. This is because largely, liberal pieties on natural rights have lost credibility; understanding the incompatibility of national sovereignty with civic responsibility and human dignity have been hindered; as well as the importance of the citizens to understand their right in affording political empowerment being compromised. Arendt was triggered to study the issue due to an increase in refugees within Europe. The sovereign authority in the state embraced universal individual rights and national sovereignty. However, the sovereign states restricted people from acquiring citizenship or the right to entry into their territories. This is a contradiction of the liberal state’s sovereignty and universalism and thus denying citizenship to person or group of people or turning away refugees of other states is a wrong principle. She argues that such rights cannot be realized without the state acknowledgement to sovereign power and that a relationship abides between the state rights and individual rights. Refugees are thus the resultant product when the state rights and individual rights conflict (Cotter, para 5-6).

The only way to understand the contradictions and failures of the current political thought and practice is by evaluating the experiences of the victims or those who lack the rights and those with nonexistent and marginal regal status. Evaluation of the lives or experiences by the victims, Arendt found out that there are three major concerns that need be evaluated. First, Arendt sited problems in the foundations of human rights where she found out that there were confrontations between the sovereignty of the people and the individual sovereignty in the liberal political theory. The ultimate result and the source of human law can then be only traced in and out on man himself. They were seen as inalienable and as though they needed no higher authority for their execution. However, the execution of the so-called inalienable laws proved un-working later and there was a need for the collective rights of the people. Therefore, the tag of contention between the nation and the individual result into a conflict between the nation and the state in which the nation is won. She says that the conflict only came to be understood at the birth of modern state when the French Revolution combined the rights of man and the national sovereignty demand (Cotter, para 1-3).

Outside the state, it is impossible to protect the rights of man, as the rights to human beings are infeasible. This was clearly seen when the Nazism refugees after being expelled from their homelands, they only got a temporal acceptance into other states or they lacked acceptance at all. This led to the conclusion that human rights were indeed alienable and thus such a phrase as human rights was a scheme to represent hypocrisy are hopeless idealism. Arendt argued that if proper laws existed, they aught be affordable to all with no conditions whatsoever so long as a person is a member of the human race.

There is a conflict between the man and state sovereignty and universalism and inalienability (Fassin and Vasquez, 402). In this regard, the ability to choose membership depicts full sovereign power in totality. Today we are living in a new global political system and this means that the ability of people to loose and never gain their right to belong is too high. This is because the world we are living in today has become more of a small village (Helis, 73-78).

Conclusion

Following the above discussion as prompted by Arendt, it is thus acceptable to reason as Arendt does, that indeed human race would require a new law to guarantee human dignity. Human laws and agreements are made by man and in no one way can be without the man himself. However, authority is instigated to oversee the workability of the laws. Nevertheless, the existing laws have largely been seen to fail and this would necessitate review and possible designing of others in order to facilitate the rightful living and coexistence between people. Failure with the government is equally to blame for the desperation with citizens by her failure to guarantee security and general responsibility. A relationship abides between the state rights and individual rights and would need great stewardship, which may not be readily available with the current ideological existence.

Works cited

Cotter Bridget, “Hannah Arendt and “the Right to Have Rights” nd. Web. 18 November, 2013. < http://isanet.ccit.arizona.edu/noarchive/cotter.html>

Fassin Didier and Vasquez Paula, “Humanitarian exception as the rule: The political theology of the 1999Tragediain Venezuela” American ethnologist, 2005. 32(3): 389 – 405

Helis John. “Hannah Arendt and Human Dignity: Theoretical Foundations and Constitutional Protection of Human Rights” journal of politics and law. 2008. 1(3):73-78