Totalizing ideologies are desperate efforts to escape responsibility

Evidence

The historian is concerned with them only insofar as they are themselves part of his history and because they stand in the way of his search for truth. Being a contemporary, he is as likely to succumb to their persuasive force as anybody else. Caution in handling generally accepted opinions that claim to explain whole trends of history is especially important for the historian of modern times, because the last century has produced an abundance of ideologies that pretend to be keys to history but are actually nothing but desperate efforts to escape responsibility. — Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 78

Categorization

• DEFINE: Arendt defines totalizing historical ideologies functionally, as escapes from responsibility rather than genuine explanations — a conceptual tool applicable to Islamophobia discourse analysis.
• XREF: connects to: Political responsibility requires abandoning the fantasy of escaping human forms of life — Chantal Mouffe, The Democratic Paradox, 356