Stateless people exposed the myth that older nations protected human rights inherently

Evidence

At the time of the Minority Treaties it could be, and was, argued in their favor, as it were as their excuse, that the older nations enjoyed constitutions which implicitly or explicitly (as in the case of France, the nation par excellence) were founded upon the Rights of Man, that even if there were other nationalities within their borders they needed no additional law for them, and that only in the newly established succession states was a temporary enforcement of human rights necessary as a compromise and exception. The arrival of the stateless people brought an end to this illusion. — Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 681

Categorization

• SEED: The ‘temporary exception’ argument about rights — how states frame rights violations as transitional compromises — maps directly onto modern refugee and citizenship debates.
• XREF: This is the bridge from the Minority Treaties to the statelessness chapter Arendt is building toward — the mechanism that collapses the Rights of Man into rights of the citizen. — connects to: Human rights covenants cannot protect peoples who lack the power to enforce them — Jessica Whyte, The Morals of the Market: Human Rights…, 226