The rightless are deprived of a world where action and opinion matter

Evidence

The fundamental deprivation of human rights is manifested first and above all in the deprivation of a place in the world which makes opinions significant and actions effective. Something much more fundamental than freedom and justice, which are rights of citizens, is at stake when belonging to the community into which one is born is no longer a matter of course and not belonging no longer a matter of choice, or when one is placed in a situation where, unless he commits a crime, his treatment by others does not depend on what he does or does not do. This extremity, and nothing else, is the situation of people deprived of human rights. They are deprived, not of the right to freedom, but of the right to action; not of the right to think whatever they please, but of the right to opinion. Privileges in some cases, injustices in most, blessings and doom are meted out to them according to accident and without any relation whatsoever to what they do, did, or may do. — Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 724

Categorization

• DEFINE: Arendt’s definitional core: the deepest deprivation is not of freedom but of the meaningfulness of action and opinion — a ‘place in the world’ where they count.
• DEEPTHINKING: The claim that rightlessness strips action and opinion of all significance — that judgment hinges on what one does except when one is rightless, where treatment is pure accident — is a paradigm-level insight central to Arendt’s whole theory.
• XREF: This is the definitional anchor the Islamophobia readings build on: the racialized Other as someone whose treatment does not depend on what they do, whose opinions are structurally meaningless.