[hexxiiiz]

"But in order to make individuals susceptible to ideology, you must first ruin their relationship to themselves and others by making them sceptical and cynical, so that they can no longer rely upon their own judgment"

As much as I am sure this does happen quite a lot, something that does not get enough emphasis is how much people's relationships to themselves erode under the very ordinary conditions of quotidian life with its stresses, indignities, and disappointments. Nothing so deliberate as a propaganda campaign is needed for this first step to already take hold of people through the subtle misery of their personal relationships. This is not to say that institutions and ideologies are not involved with this process, but I think the unconscious subtleties of this all too easily get overlooked when we culturally take a normative view of what it means to be mentally healthy as successfully living a normal life.

Arendt, in the same book, also argued that personal resentments fueled the rise of fascist regimes. I think in general, if, as a society, we want to curtail the rise of totalitarian politics, we have to really address the very personal individual antagonisms that arise in people's everyday lives; loneliness among them, but not alone as the sole culprit by a longshot.

[motohagiography]

I'm over-commenting on this thread, but this is a pet topic of mine. A controversial observation of hers was that both fascism and communism were mere national movements, limited to their nation states, where what distinguished totalitarianism as a new form itself was using those nations as stepping stones and vessels for global domination. She gives some examples of totalitarian leaders rejecting both of these ideologies as not sufficiently ambitious, after using them as stepping stones.

My own interpretation is that it begins by inculcating an identity of shame and powerlessness, which respectively create the necessary righteous cruelty and infinite appetite for power to get a totalitarian movement going and neutralizing opposition to its aims, e.g. "for good men to do nothing." It is systematized, and simple enough to iterate and scale, because what it truly was is directed chaos. Defeating it is also simple set of rules, and is in fact related to defeating loneliness as well, but that's a much longer topic.

[rzodkiew]

I think you're quite close with the inculcation of identity of shame and powerlessness. I'd go one step further and say it's inculcating of identity in general. As well as manufactured desires to keep power systems in place.

People are not encouraged to find their own identity or explore inner mind. It's all bread and circus everywhere, to stop you from paying attention to your inner self. We have ancient teachings on this topic dating way, way back (like Upanishads), yet we still haven't found a good way to actually teach and implement them.

[PaulHoule]

If anything the socialist movement foundered in the 1920s in that internationalism didn't sell politically.

For instance, Lenin and Co immediately surrendered to the Germans because "it is not our war" and the Germans said "Great! Here's our list of demands!" and it was an embarrassment given that Germany lost the war a month later.

See the Chris Harman classic

https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/lost-revolution-chris-harma...

to see what went down in Germany afterwards.

[djmips]

Where does humiliation factor in. I think this is one of the most powerful emotions and likely a big factor in the rise of totalitarian leaders.

[frongpik]

That's a clever observation. To put it simpler, a dictator is a magnet that aligns individual resentments of citizens. People can't align resentment themselves without an external guide. But loneliness isn't the cause of resentment, it's rather the feeling of being excluded. Without the anchor of inner philosophy, one can be easily manipulated into building up the resentment and directing it at a false target.