Pan-movement fanaticism rests on a genuine theology not merely rhetorical religious abuse

Evidence

Austrian Pan-Germans laid similar claims to divine chosenness even though they, with a similar liberal past, remained anticlerical and became anti-Christians. When Hitler, a self-confessed disciple of Schoenerer, stated during the last war: “God the Almighty has made our nation. We are defending His work by defending its very existence,” the reply from the other side, from a follower of Pan-Slavism, was equally true to type: “The German monsters are not only our foes, but God’s foes.” These recent formulations were not born of propaganda needs of the moment, and this kind of fanaticism does not simply abuse religious language; behind it lies a veritable theology which gave the earlier pan-movements their momentum and retained a considerable influence on the development of modern totalitarian movements. — Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 592

Categorization

• XREF: The claim that totalitarian fanaticism is a veritable theology, not mere rhetoric, connects to the reader’s scaffold on how movements generate ‘common sense’ and worldview-level framing.
• SEED: An essay angle: how anticlerical anti-Christian movements still claimed divine chosenness — political theology without institutional religion.