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Temptations of Tyranny
Rod Dreher’s conflicted support for President Trump illustrates a broader crisis among intellectual conservatives who fear the "soft totalitarianism" of liberal institutions yet embrace the hard authoritarianism of executive overreach. Drawing on Hannah Arendt’s political thought, the essay contends that true freedom is preserved not through charismatic leaders but through the multiplication and decentralization of citizen power. Revitalizing democracy, it argues, requires stubborn, local acts of collective governance rather than the dangerous temptation to concentrate authority in a single figure.04-27-2025
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Populism and Ideology
Roger BerkowitzMoisés Naim writes that a new breed of autocrats “uses populism, capitalizes on polarization, and revels in post-truth politics to undermine democratic norms and amass power, preferably for life.
04-17-2022
Disempowered, Disdainful, and Distrustful
Roger BerkowitzDavid King went to fight in Ukraine in part to escape his own descent into conspiracy theories and cynicism. Alexander Clapp looks deeply into the way that King’s experience in Afghanistan led to his loss of faith in the United States cultural, military, and political elites.
04-11-2022
The Eternal Victims of Political Elites
Roger BerkowitzWhat is behind the pro-Putin sentiment on both the far right and the far left? If you get past your revulsion at those who seemingly embrace Putinism for cynical and self-interested reasons, the support for Putin has a real source in the rampant distrust and disdain for political and cultural elites. Ian Buruma explains.
04-11-2022
The End of Politics
Roger BerkowitzThere are all sorts of books written about How Democracies Die. Hannah Arendt argued that the great threats to democracies are bureaucratization and bigness, both of which led to Praxis-Entzug, a feeling of disempowerment and depoliticization. This certainly seems to be happening in France. Ivanne Trippenbach, Julie Carriat, Laurent Telo, Solenn de Royer and Olivier Faye write in Le Monde that the Presidential election in France has encountered unprecedented apathy. Ivanne Trippenbach, Julie Carriat, Laurent Telo, Solemn de Royer and Olivier Faye write in Le Monde that the Presidential election in France has encountered unprecedented apathy.
04-11-2022
Friendship and Tolerance
Roger BerkowitzMichael Bloom writes about the importance of Lessing’s play Nathan the Wise, the first play performed in Germany in 1945 after the fall of the Nazis. In discussing the reception of the play, Bloom focuses on two different reactions by Hannah Arendt, who came to see Lessing as the great thinker of political friendship.
04-03-2022
Low Trust Societies
Roger BerkowitzAlexander Beiner interviews N.S. Lyons about the impact of the Russian war in Ukraine on Russia, the West, and China. At one point, Beiner asks, “To what extent is Chinese culture and politics truly collectivist in its outlook?”
04-03-2022
The Bureaucratic Danger in Academia
Roger BerkowitzHannah Arendt respected civil servants who brought competence and professionalism to their jobs. At the same time, however, she worried deeply about bureaucracy, which is often associated with civil service. In her early work The Origins of Totalitarianism, Arendt argues that bureaucracy as it developed in India, Egypt, and Algeria was a new form of government of foreign people that sought to rule and dominate them outside of legal restraints. As a non-legal government based on personal power, bureaucracy was intertwined with racism that justified the brutal colonial rule by European powers.
04-03-2022
Arendt as an Epistolary Friend
Madeleine Thien reads Hannah Arendt’s correspondence and finds that they add to her depth as a thinker.03-27-2022
Some Reflections on War
Roger BerkowitzThe Russian war of aggression in Ukraine raises questions about what Hannah Arendt called “the war question.”
03-27-2022