ALMANAC WEEKLY
A miscellany of Hudson Valley art, adventure and ideas | Calendar Ca l e n da r & C Classifieds lassifieds | Issue 5 | Feb. 2 – 9
Did you know there are more than 400 species of bee in NY state?
Rhinecliff estate that inspired Edith Wharton faces uncertain future
A chat with international cheese expert Kate Arding of Hudson
YouTube sensation Scott Bradlee's Postmodern Jukebox comes to the Bardavon
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Quo Vadimus?
WILL DENDIS | ALMANAC WEEKLY
Lost in the crowd How a 65-year-old work of political theory can help explain our times “In an ever-changing, incomprehensible world the masses had reached the point where they would, at the same time, believe everything and nothing, think that everything was possible and that nothing was true.” —Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism
H
annah Arendt’s words jump off the page. Passages that 10-20 years ago might have been read as insights into an increasingly distant and historic mass psychosis that gripped Central Europe for a few decades in the first half of the last century now seem perfectly apt
to describe our present time of alternative facts and information overload. The Origins of Totalitarianism joins 1984 and It Can’t Happen Here on the list of books readers are turning to for insights into what’s happening in America, and whether the new president is a brash populist who can “get things done” within the general framework of American democratic institutions or if he represents a genuine threat to them. All three are currently sold out on Amazon. com. Interest in Arendt’s work is evident in the Hudson Valley as well. The Hannah Arendt Center for Politics and Humanities at Bard College is currently
hosting a 12-week virtual reading group on Origins. While previous groups have averaged around 25-35 participants per session, double that amount joined the first session on January 20, according to Roger Berkowitz, founder and academic director of the center. More than 100 had signed up as of January 26, and the group was nearing the capacity of its videoconferencing software. Written in 1951, the book traces the roots of totalitarianism in Europe, particularly in Germany and Russia, to the decay of the nation-state brought on by imperialism and the attendant rise of racism that allowed civilized Europeans to rationalize treating colonial peoples
Shelf-Awareness A series looking at books that shed light on the present moment. Part I: The Origins of Totalitarianism by Hannah Arendt
unjustly. Imperialism abroad and pan movements across continental Europe pitted the interests of investors and business, who needed to keep expanding to be viable, against the nationalists, who believed in the nation-state as a self-contained political unit based on a common culture and language. As the (Continued on page 10)