Bureaucratic chaos and anti-Western irrationalism emotionally prepared Europe for totalitarianism

Evidence

Only the Russian Empire of that time offered a complete picture of rule by bureaucracy. The chaotic conditions of the country—too vast to be ruled, populated by primitive peoples without experience in political organization of any kind, who vegetated under the incomprehensible overlordship of the Russian bureaucracy—conjured up an atmosphere of anarchy and hazard in which the conflicting whims of petty officials and the daily accidents of incompetence and inconsistency inspired a philosophy that saw in the Accident the true Lord of Life, something like the apparition of Divine Providence. … The totalitarian movements still owed much of their appeal to this vague and embittered antiWestern mood that was especially in vogue in pre-Hitler Germany and Austria, but had seized the general European intelligentsia of the twenties as well. Up to the moment of actual seizure of power, they could use this passion for the profound and rich “irrational,” and during the crucial years when the exiled Russian intelligentsia exerted a not negligible influence upon the spiritual mood of an entirely disturbed Europe, this purely literary attitude proved to be a strong emotional factor in preparing the ground for totalitarianism. — Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 626

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the Islamophobia field’s need to understand how irrationalist anti-Western moods (‘irrationalism’) become ideological fuel; parallel to how colonial/postcolonial discourse is politicized. Also connects to Arendt’s broader claim in this book about totalitarianism’s psychological preconditions. — connects to: Elite reaction from the 1890s, not worker insurgency, fueled Europe’s prewar crisis — Alex Callinicos, Against Postmodernism: A Marxist…, 184; Totalitarianism fused liberal naturalism with irrationalism to deify nature against history — Martin Jay, The Dialectical Imagination: A History…, 405; Futurism’s celebration of speed and destruction aligned with fascism — David Harvey, The Condition of Postmodernity: An…, 251 (+3 more)
• DEFINE: Clarifies the mechanism by which a literary-cultural mood (anti-Western irrationalism) becomes a political precondition — a central concept for the field’s understanding of how ideology precedes organized politics.