Neither elites nor victims have ever taken abstract human-rights declarations seriously.

Evidence

No statesman, no political figure of any importance could possibly take them seriously; and none of the liberal or radical parties in Europe thought it necessary to incorporate into their program a new declaration of human rights. Neither before nor after the second World War have the victims themselves ever invoked these fundamental rights, which were so evidently denied them, in their many attempts to find a way out of the barbed-wire labyrinth into which events had driven them. On the contrary, the victims shared the disdain and indifference of the powers that be for any attempt of the marginal societies to enforce human rights in any elementary or general sense. — Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 711

Categorization

• XREF: Pairs with the ‘Rights of Man’ critique that follows in the chapter and with postcolonial critiques of universalist rights rhetoric as serving power.
• SEED: Angle: when do rights declarations actually get invoked — and the ‘barbed-wire labyrinth’ framing could anchor an essay on rights-talk vs. concrete protection.