Hannah Arendt, in The Origins of Totalitarianism (1951), said the following factors in German and Russian society made them susceptible to parallel rises in Nazism (authoritarianism, ultranationalism) and Bolshevism (leftist socialism communism):
•Loneliness
•Loss of faith in hierarchies and institutions
•Indifference to truth, and the willingness to believe useful lies
•A mania for ideology
•Social atomization
•The desire to transgress and destroy
•A society that values loyalty more than expertise
•The politicization of EVERYTHING
Coincidently and perhaps timely, while cleaning out a closet in the basement I found my copy of OOT from school. Good time to re-read. Also coincidently and sadly, I saw Dr Rich Martin who taught political theory at SRU where we studied Arendt passed away last year. He taught his students to reflect on current events with the wisdom of the past.