Imperialism recruited sincere idealists, not just hypocrites, into its self-serving myths

Evidence

The fact that the “white man’s burden” is either hypocrisy or racism has not prevented a few of the best Englishmen from shouldering the burden in earnest and making themselves the tragic and quixotic fools of imperialism. As real in England as the tradition of hypocrisy is another less obvious one which one is tempted to call a tradition of dragon-slayers who went enthusiastically into far and curious lands to strange and naive peoples to slay the numerous dragons that had plagued them for centuries. — Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 542

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the ‘white man’s burden’ idealist tradition analyzed in Achebe’s Things Fall Apart and the colonial psychology toolkit.
• SEED: Angle: the ‘well-meaning imperialist’ as a figure running from Kipling through modern NGO voluntourism and humanitarian intervention.