Imperialist groups’ above-parties rhetoric concealed their narrow elite base

Evidence

The slogan “above the parties,” the appeal to “men of all parties,” and the boast that they would “stand far removed from the strife of parties and represent only a national purpose” was equally characteristic of all imperialist groups, where it appeared as a natural consequence of their exclusive interest in foreign policy in which the nation was supposed to act as a whole in any event, independent of classes and parties. Since, moreover, in the Continental systems this representation of the nation as a whole had been the “monopoly” of the state, it could even seem that the imperialists put the state’s interests above everything else, or that the interest of the nation as a whole had found in them its long-sought popular support. Yet despite all such claims to true popularity the “parties above parties” remained small societies of intellectuals and well-to-do people who, like the Pan-German League, could hope to find a larger appeal only in times of national emergency. — Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 633

Categorization

• XREF: The above-parties appeal to national unity prefigures hegemonic claims about representing the people as a whole against factions — relevant to Gramsci’s hegemony and how Islamophobia discourse claims to speak for the nation. — connects to: Neocons deliberately campaign to shape public opinion for imperial wars