![]() ![]() Taking as her example the genocidal, administrated extermination of black African tribes in German South West Africa and Belgian Congo, Arendt claims that imperialist politics exported the model of the nation state to colonialized territories by simply replacing nation with “race” and government with “bureaucracy”, hence inventing a pre-totalitarian form of racist bureaucracy that had no appeal to international law. ![]() Inspired by Rosa Luxemburg, Arendt argued that when capitalist profit and accumulation of wealth became the single guiding principle of foreign policy, no diplomacy or appeal to international, humanitarian law was necessary or even reasonable. Yet, few know that a critique of anti-black racism forms an indistinguishable part of Arendt’s wider theorization of totalitarianism.Īlthough Arendt held Arthur de Gobineau to be the inventor of modern, eugenic racism, she also elaborated on Thomas Hobbes’ contribution to the birth of 19 th and 20 th century racist discourse. Hannah Arendt was one of the first European political thinkers to theorize Nazi totalitarianism as the logical conclusion of an earlier era of imperialist colonialism and racist foreign policy. ![]()
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