Continental imperialism needs no overseas distance and operates directly at home

Evidence

The chief importance of continental, as distinguished from overseas, imperialism lies in the fact that its concept of cohesive expansion does not allow for any geographic distance between the methods and institutions of colony and of nation, so that it did not require boomerang effects in order to make itself and all its consequences felt in Europe. Continental imperialism truly begins at home. If it shared with overseas imperialism the contempt for the narrowness of the nation-state, it opposed to it not so much economic arguments, which after all quite frequently expressed authentic national needs, as an “enlarged tribal consciousness” which was supposed to unite all people of similar folk origin, independent of history and no matter where they happened to live. Continental imperialism, therefore, started with a much closer affinity to race concepts, enthusiastically absorbed the tradition of race-thinking, and relied very little on specific experiences. Its race concepts were completely ideological in basis and developed much more quickly into a convenient political weapon than similar theories expressed by overseas imperialists which could always claim a certain basis in authentic experience. — Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 571

Categorization

• DEFINE: Defines continental vs overseas imperialism by the absence of geographic separation — a core toolkit distinction. The mechanism ‘continental imperialism begins at home’ is exactly the sort of conceptual scaffolding the reader needs.
• DEEPTHINKING: The claim that continental race theory is more purely ideological because it lacks empirical experience is a dense, counterintuitive distinction worth sitting with.