The front generation turned total destruction into a supreme value.

Evidence

Simply to brand as outbursts of nihilism this violent dissatisfaction with the prewar age and subsequent attempts at restoring it (from Nietzsche and Sorel to Pareto, from Rimbaud and T. E. Lawrence to Jünger, Brecht, and Malraux, from Bakunin and Nechayev to Alexander Blok) is to overlook how justified disgust can be in a society wholly permeated with the ideological outlook and moral standards of the bourgeoisie. Yet it is also true that the “front generation,” in marked contrast to their own chosen spiritual fathers, were completely absorbed by their desire to see the ruin of this whole world of fake security, fake culture, and fake life. This desire was so great that it outweighed in impact and articulateness all earlier attempts at a “transformation of values,” such as Nietzsche had attempted, or a reorganization of political life as indicated in Sorel’s writings, or a revival of human authenticity in Bakunin, or a passionate love of life in the purity of exotic adventures in Rimbaud. Destruction without mitigation, chaos and ruin as such assumed the dignity of supreme values. — Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 780

Categorization

• XREF: The distinction between the front generation and their ‘spiritual fathers’ (Nietzsche, Sorel, Bakunin) connects to later readings on how radical ideas degenerate when detached from their original moral grounding — an analogy to how Islamophobia scholarship traces concepts from intellectual origins to mass-political deployment.