The people, the masses, and the mobilization of power: the paradox of Hannah Arendt's "populism" *.

From: Social Research | Date: June 22, 2002| Author: Canovan, Margaret | Copyright information

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THIS paper is concerned with a puzzling feature of Arendt's thought, what might be called the paradox of her "populism." The paradox is that while she welcomed direct action by the people, she also feared and deplored almost all actual cases of grassroots mobilization.

Much of The Origins of Totalitarianism is devoted to analyzing the activities of totalitarian movements and racist or anti-Semitic mobs, and the book makes clear Arendt's distrust of almost a...

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