Amor Mundi

Our Crisis of Disempowerment

Phillip K. Howard offers an Arendtian understanding of our current predicament, based on the phenomenon of disempowerment. As Arendt famously wrote, “Bureaucracy is the form of government in which everybody is deprived of political freedom, of the power to act; for the rule of Nobody is not no-rule, and where all are equally powerless we have a tyranny without a tyrant.” 

The Looming Biden-Trump Rematch

"Deep divisions in the United States are not new; indeed, they can be traced back to the Constitutional Convention and the days of John Adams versus Thomas Jefferson. But according to some scholars, they have rarely reached the levels seen today, when Red and Blue Americas are moving farther and farther apart geographically, philosophically, financially, educationally and informationally."

"The Zone Of Interest"/The Banality of Evil

Alissa Wilkinson reviews the new Jonathan Glazer film, The Zone of Interest, which is a full-on exploration of Hannah Arendt’s thinking around the banality of evil. Wilkinson writes, "In The Zone of Interest, characters don’t talk about murder or genocide, [and their] internal distance through the movie’s images and sounds. The result is unsettling in the extreme . . . the nauseating shock packs a stronger punch than any horror movie I’ve seen this year."

American Jewish Peace Archive: An Interview with Arthur Samuelson

HAC is proud to sponsor The American Jewish Peace Archive, a repository of interviews with U.S. and Israeli Jews who have advocated for self-determination for Jews and Palestinians. Organized by oral historian Aliza Becker, the Archive seeks to explore the diversity of Jewish thought on Israel. Today, we share an excerpt from a conversation with Arthur Samuelson, who served as Assistant Editor for the Israeli peace magazine New Outlook in the mid '70s.

Totalitarianism in the Bathtub

Lyndsey Stonebridge's surprising, wonderful, and novel new biographical tale of Arendt’s life and thinking, We Are Free To Change The World is not your typical biography. It offers a quirky, original, serious, and humane inquiry into Arendt’s work and her continuing relevance in our world.  

American Jewish Peace Archive: An Interview with Robert K. Lifton

HAC is proud to sponsor The American Jewish Peace Archive, a comprehensive repository of over 200 interviews with U.S. and Israeli Jews who have advocated for self-determination for Jews and Palestinians. Organized by activist and oral historian Aliza Becker, the Archive seeks to explore the plurality of Jewish thought on Israel. Today, we share an excerpt from a conversation with Robert K.Lifton, who served as President of the American Jewish Congress from 1988-1994.

Rebuilding Trust

Jedediah Britton Purdy writes that democracy depends on trust, but the fracturing world of experts and the loss of authority suffered by nearly all institutions means that trust is dispersed, politicized, and weaponized. : How can we rebuild common institutions of trust? His answer: “We need to practice nondefensively meeting serious disagreement—and proceeding to the rest of the human being.”

How to Combat Disinformation

In a long essay on the dangers and challenges of AI generated disinformation, Hannah Murphy pretty much gives up, noting that there may simply be no way to combat such advanced disinformation. One approach is X's Community Notes feature, which allows users to propose that a short note of context be added to any Tweet. Community Notes use the Pol.is software, which sorts feedback via algorithms that prioritize broad-cross-partisan consensus rather than popularity. 

The Plan to Denaturalize German Citizens

Hannah Arendt writes that one of the first and most important indicators of rising totalitarianism is the decision to denaturalize citizens on racial or religious grounds. With that in mind, on November 25, in Potsdam, less than 5 miles from the site where leading Nazis laid out the plans for the Final Solution, two dozen Germans came together to discuss plans for expelling asylum seekers, legally residing foreigners, and “unassimilated citizens.