Quotable Quote
"Practically speaking, the totalitarian ruler proceeds like a man who persistently insults another man until everybody knows that the latter is his enemy, so that he can, with some plausibility, go and kill him in self-defense."
-Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism
[I’m re-reading this now, and while chavismo is much closer to Arendt’s idea of dictatorship than to her much more radical understanding of totalitarianism – a term she reserved for what Stalin and Hitler did after they had crushed any semblance of organized opposition – some of her quotes about the latter definitely spark that flash of recognition…]
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