"But in order to make individuals susceptible to ideology, you must first ruin their relationship to themselves and others by making them sceptical and cynical, so that they can no longer rely upon their own judgment"
As much as I am sure this does happen quite a lot, something that does not get enough emphasis is how much people's relationships to themselves erode under the very ordinary conditions of quotidian life with its stresses, indignities, and disappointments. Nothing so deliberate as a propaganda campaign is needed for this first step to already take hold of people through the subtle misery of their personal relationships. This is not to say that institutions and ideologies are not involved with this process, but I think the unconscious subtleties of this all too easily get overlooked when we culturally take a normative view of what it means to be mentally healthy as successfully living a normal life.
Arendt, in the same book, also argued that personal resentments fueled the rise of fascist regimes. I think in general, if, as a society, we want to curtail the rise of totalitarian politics, we have to really address the very personal individual antagonisms that arise in people's everyday lives; loneliness among them, but not alone as the sole culprit by a longshot.
As much as I am sure this does happen quite a lot, something that does not get enough emphasis is how much people's relationships to themselves erode under the very ordinary conditions of quotidian life with its stresses, indignities, and disappointments. Nothing so deliberate as a propaganda campaign is needed for this first step to already take hold of people through the subtle misery of their personal relationships. This is not to say that institutions and ideologies are not involved with this process, but I think the unconscious subtleties of this all too easily get overlooked when we culturally take a normative view of what it means to be mentally healthy as successfully living a normal life.
Arendt, in the same book, also argued that personal resentments fueled the rise of fascist regimes. I think in general, if, as a society, we want to curtail the rise of totalitarian politics, we have to really address the very personal individual antagonisms that arise in people's everyday lives; loneliness among them, but not alone as the sole culprit by a longshot.