[socjust, p/a/s, curr ev] Fwd: The Significance of Overt Racism
I commend to you this brilliant essay from the Hannah Arendt Center: The Significance of Overt Racism. It discusses how the Nazis used antisemitism to undermine the rule of law, and how Trump's expressed antipathy towards Muslims and Latinxs fits right into that pattern: [...] Arendt discloses for us how we might go about apprehending the seriousness of racism through the shadow of common sense. In Origins of Totalitarianism, Arendt says that one does this by reckoning with the fact that antisemitism was an effective tool for establishing terror as a major weapon of government. However, Arendt also explains that before terror is established as a form of government, it first “must be presented as an instrument for carrying out a specific ideology, and the ideology must have won the adherence of many, even a majority before terror can be established” (7). Terror, in its most general sense for Arendt, describes punishment meted out by the state because it has been determined that a person has broken the law, not because of his actions, but for other arbitrary reasons.
[...] These [18th and 19th century widespread, class-crossing] antisemitic sentiments not only established a world order but also a dangerous habit of knowing people independent of who they showed themselves to be through their actual actions, and in accordance to proclivities that had been attributed to them because of their race. This habit of race-thinking, or more aptly put race world-making, was dangerous because it was compatible with enforcing the law through terror, that is, through judicial decisions that determined guilt and a person’s punishment (or the lack thereof) because they were a Jew, not because his actions had been demonstrated to be in violation of the law. And once law enforcers engage in this kind of terror, the rule of law has been undermined and the entire political community is in danger of collapsing.
[...]
Racism is bad (racist views and all) not just because it limits the life chances of those marginalized, but because it produces social and economic orders that exude it and habits of race world-making that penetrate and undermine the rule of law.
[...] These [18th and 19th century widespread, class-crossing] antisemitic sentiments not only established a world order but also a dangerous habit of knowing people independent of who they showed themselves to be through their actual actions, and in accordance to proclivities that had been attributed to them because of their race. This habit of race-thinking, or more aptly put race world-making, was dangerous because it was compatible with enforcing the law through terror, that is, through judicial decisions that determined guilt and a person’s punishment (or the lack thereof) because they were a Jew, not because his actions had been demonstrated to be in violation of the law. And once law enforcers engage in this kind of terror, the rule of law has been undermined and the entire political community is in danger of collapsing.
[...]
Racism is bad (racist views and all) not just because it limits the life chances of those marginalized, but because it produces social and economic orders that exude it and habits of race world-making that penetrate and undermine the rule of law.