Colonial adventurers were hollow men driven by resentment toward a master race

Evidence

Like Mr. Kurtz in Conrad’s “Heart of Darkness,” they were “hollow to the core,” “reckless without hardihood, greedy without audacity and cruel without courage.” They believed in nothing and “could get (themselves) to believe anything—anything.” Expelled from a world with accepted social values, they had been thrown back upon themselves and still had nothing to fall back upon except, here and there, a streak of talent which made them as dangerous as Kurtz if they were ever allowed to return to their homelands. For the only talent that could possibly burgeon in their hollow souls was the gift of fascination which makes a “splendid leader of an extreme party.” The more gifted were walking incarnations of resentment like the German Carl Peters (possibly the model for Kurtz), who openly admitted that he “was fed up with being counted among the pariahs and wanted to belong to a master race.” — Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 493

Categorization

• DEFINE: Defines the psychological type Arendt will trace into the totalitarian figure: the hollow, resentful colonial adventurer who can believe anything.
• XREF: Connects directly to the Conrad ‘Heart of Darkness’ imagery Arendt uses elsewhere and to the psychology of the ‘extreme party leader’ that resurfaces in later totalitarianism chapters.