As America braces for Saturday’s military celebration of President Donald Trump’s 79th birthday — and as Los Angeles confronts violent protests against National Guard and military deployments for migrant arrests — Hannah Arendt’s warnings decades ago about totalitarian threats to democratic institutions seem increasingly prophetic.
The Washington Post
This writer warned us about tyranny years ago. Will we listen now?
PBS film on Jewish philosopher Hannah Arendt offers vital lessons on totalitarianism.
June 13, 2025
Arendt, who wrote the 1963 book “Eichmann in Jerusalem,” argued that members of the Nazi movement weren’t all evil. Rather, they were rubber-stamping administrators of mass slaughter who were far removed from the smoke of extermination camps to which they consigned Jewish men, women and children.
A controversial figure until her death in 1975, she is the subject of a new documentary from filmmaker Jeff Bieber and Chana Gazit. “Hannah Arendt: Facing Tyranny” airs June 27 on PBS.
Arendt, who grew up in Germany and was a prisoner of the Nazis before eventually escaping to the United States, became a lifelong student of tyranny and totalitarianism. Though also interested in existential and religious questions, as well as love, she explored the darkest mysteries of her time: How could they? How did we get here? Arendt posed these same questions about German Jews who helped the Nazis round up fellow Jews in exchange for favors and freedom.
These observations, among others made throughout her life as a student, teacher, writer and complicated romantic, brought her criticism from others who claimed she was excusing Eichmann’s actions. Arendt denied these accusations as lies and propaganda. Even so, she left room for skeptics to question her fealty to her ethnicity, especially given her introspection about her heritage and a love affair she had with her philosophy professor, Martin Heidegger, who became an avowed Nazi.
The PBS film arrives, not coincidentally, at a time when Americans need a reminder on how easily a country can lose its moorings and its freedom — not overnight but piece by piece, enemy by enemy, deportation by deportation.
When she came to the United States as a young woman, Arendt’s first impression was awe that “there really is a thing called freedom.” America, she said, wasn’t Christian, wasn’t White, but was “a country for everyone.” Her sense of security was to be short-lived under Sen. Joseph McCarthy’s hunt for communists, which created familiar dread in Arendt. Germany under Hitler’s influence similarly declared communists enemies of the state and began deporting them as the country descended further into hyperinflation and crisis.
Next, of course, came the Jews, who had migrated to Germany after World War I. It was relatively easy at that point for Hitler to demonize and later dehumanize migrant Jews, many of whom were destitute. The antisemitic narrative had changed dramatically by 1931, when Arendt said: “The most efficient fiction of Nazi propaganda was the story of a Jewish world conspiracy. The Nazis acted as though the world were dominated by the Jews and needed a counter conspiracy to defend itself.”
Chillingly, Arendt wrote in her 1951 book, “The Origins of Totalitarianism,” that “the ideal subject was not the convinced Nazi, but people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction no longer existed. A most cherished virtue is loyalty to the leader who, like a talisman, assures that ultimate victory of lie and fiction over truth and reality.”
I don’t need to draw a red arrow pointing to Trump’s documented lies and disdain for truth.
Dictatorships often begin with declaring an enemy to deflect blame for problems that otherwise might accrue to those in charge. Human beings — men primarily — appear to need an enemy to give them purpose, or, perhaps, to enhance their self-esteem. In Hitler’s case, the Germans who fell under his spell, said Arendt, were “lonely” and “needy of meaning and belonging.”
There’s no denying similarities between this description and Trump’s understanding of Americans who felt disenfranchised by globalization, angered by our porous southern border, and the contempt they felt from the media (absolutely justified) and those they considered elitists (also justified and often overlapping). Obviously, the parallels between Hitler and the Nazis and Trump and the MAGA movement aren’t literally comparable. Trump’s immigration program is aimed at deporting migrants, not exterminating them.
The last third of the PBS film focuses on Arendt in America and her growing sense that the violence of the 1960s and thereafter could undermine institutions that give the country its stability. America really could be defeated from within, she said. She was referring to the Vietnam War, the protests, the deployment of the National Guard on college campuses and the killing of four students at Kent State University.
In these events, Arendt recognized a familiar trajectory. She believed that once violence was accepted as politics — and U.S. troops were turned against civilians — America risked moving toward totalitarianism. All that was missing was a charismatic agent to inspire the fear and distrust necessary to undermine democratic institutions, especially the media.
Fast-forward a few decades, and “fake media” became a rallying cry for the man of the moment, while institutional integrity continued its downward spiral from a half-century before. Trump didn’t create distrust; he recognized and amplified it. Were Arendt alive today, she might warn about the dangers of masked, military-style gunmen snatching brown people from the streets of Los Angeles and elsewhere without identifying themselves.
Would we hear her? Many Americans are very concerned, but today’s dueling perceptions of reality have meant that at least one-third of the country’s voters fail to see Trump’s overstepping as dangerous. A recent Quinnipiac poll found that 38 percent approve of the president’s performance, but 54 percent do not.
Trump has made no secret of his admiration for dictators, kings and tyrants, whose worshipful minions he has praised with envy.
We’ve also learned that we should pay attention to what Trump says. When he told the Pentagon that he wanted to “top” France’s Bastille Day parade, we can believe it. Plans for Saturday’s extravaganza include 100 combat vehicles, 7,500 troops, 50 aircraft and paratroopers from the Army’s Golden Knights — who will land on the Ellipse where Trump will observe the exercises — and present the president with an American flag.
If Arendt were alive, she would surely recognize this embarrassing display for what it is. Not just a 250th anniversary parade to celebrate the founding of the Army or the president’s birthday, but a $45 million tribute to Donald Trump. Dictators and their emulators love nothing more than a great, big, beautiful parade.