There are instances in Dostoevsky’s novel Demons that show how movements can become totalitarian despite, therefore a big concept that Arendt has brought up in The Origins of Totalitarianism comes up in Demons. This concept is the distortion of reality and manipulating the masses.
“Every nation has its own idea of evil and good, and its own evil and good. When many nations start having common ideas of evil and good, then the nations die out and the very distinction between evil and good begins to fade and disappear. Reason has never been able to define evil and good, or even to separate evil from good, if only approximately; on the contrary, it has always confused them, shamefully and pitifully; and science has offered the solution of the fist.” (Dostoevsky, 251)
This quote reminded me of Arendt’s points of how totalitarian movements like the Nazi Regime that start my gathering support of the masses and defining, like what the novel said, “evil and good.” But once that movement has gathered enough traction and support, leaders of said movement can twist reality and blur the line between what is good and what is evil. Going back to what Arendt has said Nazi Regime and its influence on Germany, after Hitler was able to take power and become an influential figure, he started to spread the narrative of the Jewish population being an enemy within the country. “The most efficient fiction of Nazi propaganda was the story of Jewish world conspiracy. Concentration on antisemetic propaganda had been a common device of demagogues ever since the end of the nineteenth century, and was widespread in the Germany and Austria of the twenties.” (Arendt, 463) It’s also interesting too that these antisemetic ideologies were already existent prior to the Nazi Regimes so the definition of what is good and “evil” began to disappear during World War II. What the Nazis did to the Jewish population was deemed as “good” but the acts themselves were very evil which can cause this confusion that comes in Demons.
Another way of defining what is good and evil and distorting reality is during the Russian Revolution led by the Bolsheviks and how the Communist regime evolved into defining good and evil. Vladimir Lenin defined the enemy or the evil as the ruling elite that put most of Russia at a disadvantage economically. This resonated with a lot of people in Russia so he gathered support and took down the establishment. Then after Lenin, Stalin took over and what was a fight against the establishment for the benefit of the people became a fight against capitalism with the arrival of the Cold War. America was defined as the new enemy / evil and the fight against them was good. You can see how easy it is to change the minds of people into believing what is good and evil and when the distinction becomes too confusing, people just go along with it. That is why you have a lot of people not challenging what is defined as good and evil.
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