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Adam S. Rust

Adam S. Rust

@asrust.bsky.social

3.4K followers 94 following 490 posts

Lawyer, writes on law things, writings have appeared in Liberal Currents and Balls & Strikes, based in San Jose, CA.

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Adam S. Rust @asrust.bsky.social · 7d

Over the next several weeks I am going to live skeet my evening reading of Hannah Arendt's "The Origins of Totalitarianism" for no particular reason.

Picture of the Library of America edition of Hannah Arendt's "The Origins of Totalitarianism" with a glass and decanter of bourbon adjacent for no particular reason.

Adam S. Rust @asrust.bsky.social · 7h

I have received it. Will @paulcrider.liberalcurrents.com get his Katznelson book back? Who's to say?

Paul Crider @paulcrider.liberalcurrents.com · 9h

More like Soarin' Kierkegaard amirite.

This skeet brought to you by my frantic text to @jcrider.bsky.social to find my copy of Feminist Interpretations of Søren Kierkegaard so I can finally give it to @asrust.bsky.social.

Adam S. Rust @asrust.bsky.social · 20h

Disraeli's vision of politics as the product of the machinations of secret cabals arose from his experience trying to enter the UK's poshest clubs.

"Disraeli's persistent fondness for explaining politics in terms of secret societies was based on experiences which later convinced many lesser European intellectuals. His basic experience had been that a place in English society was much more difficult to win than a seat in Parliament. English society of his time gathered in fashionable clubs which were independent of party distinctions. The clubs, although they were extremely important in the formation of a political elite, escaped public control. To an outsider they must have looked very mysterious indeed. They were secret insofar as not everybody was admitted to them. They became mysterious only when members of other classes asked admittance and were either refused or admitted after a plethora of incalculable, unpredictable, apparently irrational difficulties. There is no doubt that no political honor could replace the triumphs that intimate association with the privileged could give. Disraeli's ambitions, significantly enough, did not suffer even at the end of his life when he experienced severe political defeats, for he remained "the most commanding figure of London society. ""

Adam S. Rust @asrust.bsky.social · 20h

The structural economic reasons sons of Jewish bankers broke left and the working class was never really antisemitic, per Arendt.

"The truth was, of course, that the sons of Jewish millionaires inclined toward leftist movements precisely because their banker fathers had never come into an open class conflict with workers. They therefore completely lacked that class consciousness that the son of any ordinary bourgeois family would have had as a matter of course, while, on the other side, and for exactly the..."

"... same reasons, the workers did not harbor those open or hidden antisemitic sentiments which every other class showed the Jews as a matter of course. Obviously leftist movements in most countries offered the only true possibilities for assimilation."

Adam S. Rust @asrust.bsky.social · 20h

"The Jews control everything," whispers secularized Jew Benjamin Disraeli, "and it is AWESOME."

"Disraeli's unbelievable naïveté made him connect all these "secret" forces with the Jews. "The first Jesuits were Jews; that mysterious Russian diplomacy which so alarms Western Europe is organized and principally carried on by Jews; that mighty revolution which is at this moment preparing in Germany and which will be in fact a second and greater Reformation... is entirely developing under the auspices of Jews," "men of Jewish race are found at the head of every one of (communist and socialist groups). The people of God co-operate with atheists; the most skilful accumulators of property ally themselves with communists, the peculiar and chosen race touch the hands of the scum and low castes of Europe! And all this because they wish to destroy that ungrateful Christendom which owes them even its name and whose tyranny they can no longer endure." In Disraeli's imagination, the world had become Jewish."

Adam S. Rust @asrust.bsky.social · 20h

Reading Disraeli going on about a global Jewish conspiracy a la "The Protocols of the Elders of Zion" and then going "but, like, it's totally rad" is wild.

Adam S. Rust @asrust.bsky.social · 20h

Buried in here Arendt is giving the first hint of where she will be going in her imperialism section. It is ominous, of course.

"This paradox has found its most powerful and charming embodiment in Disraeli. He was an English imperialist and a Jewish chauvinist; but it is not difficult to pardon a chauvinism which was rather a play of imagination because, after all, "England was the Israel of his imagination"; and it is not difficult, either, to pardon his English imperialism, which had so little in common with the single-minded resoluteness of expansion for expansion's sake, since he was, after all, "never a thorough Englishman and was proud of the fact."52 All those curious contradictions which indicate so clearly that the potent wizard never took himself quite seriously and always played a role to win society and to find popularity, add up to..."

"... a unique charm, they introduce into all his utterances an element of charlatan enthusiasm and day-dreaming which makes him utterly different from his imperialist followers. He was lucky enough to do his dreaming and acting in a time when Manchester and the businessmen had not yet taken over the imperial dream and were even in sharp and furious opposition to "colonial adventures." His superstitious belief in blood and race-into which he mixed old romantic folk credulities about a powerful supranational connection between gold and blood-carried no suspicion of possible massacres, whether in Africa, Asia, or Europe proper. He began as a not too gifted writer and remained an intellectual whom chance made a member of Parliament, leader of his party, Prime Minister, and a friend of the Queen of England."

Adam S. Rust @asrust.bsky.social · 20h

Arendt making the observation that while race theorizing can be used as a tool to justify inferiority, they can also be used to fight it. It can be a sort of aristocratic marker for a newly emerging mass society.

"The close relationship of this to more modern race ideol-ogies need not be stressed, and Disraeli's discovery is one more proof of how well they serve to combat feelings of social inferiority. For if race doctrines finally served much more sinister and immediately political purposes, it is still true that much of their plausibility and persuasiveness lay in the fact that they helped anybody feel himself an aristocrat who had been selected by birth on the strength of "racial" qualification. That these new selected ones did not belong to an elite, to a selected few-which, after all, had been inherent in the pride of a nobleman-but had to share chosenness with an ever-growing mob, did no essential harm to the doctrine, for those who did..."

"... not belong to the chosen race grew numerically in the same proportion."

Adam S. Rust @asrust.bsky.social · 20h

Arendt's portrait of British Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli is a lot of fun. Her observations on how the secret marker of aristocracy is "pride in privilege without individual effort", and how Disraeli leveraged his Jewish ancestry to make his version of that secret marker, is fascinating.

"Vague blood theories and strict control of marriages are rather recent phenomena in the history of European aristocracy. Disraeli knew much better than the German philistines what was required to meet the demands of aristocracy. All attempts of the bourgeoisie to attain social status failed to convince aristocratic arrogance because they reckoned with individuals and lacked the most important element of caste conceit, the pride in privilege without individual effort and merit, simply by virtue of birth. The "innate personality" could never deny that its development demanded education and special effort of the individual. When Disraeli "summoned up a pride of race to confront a pride of caste,"47 he knew that the social status of the Jews, whatever else might be said of it, at least depended solely on the fact of birth and not on achievement."

Adam S. Rust @asrust.bsky.social · 1d

Arendt doing a job of showing the pathologies that emerge when we force our private lives to bear the burden of unresolved political problems.

"The adage, "a man in the street and a Jew at home," was bitterly realized: political problems were distorted to the point of pure perversion when Jews tried to solve them by means of inner experience and private emotions; private life was poisoned to the point of inhumanity-for example in the question of mixed marriages-when the heavy burden of unsolved problems of public significance was crammed into that private existence which is much better ruled by the unpredictable laws of passion than by considered policies."

Adam S. Rust @asrust.bsky.social · 1d

I'm starting to clock that when Arendt uses words like "psychological" and phrases like "personal problem" she signaling something Not Good is happening.

"The behavior patterns of assimilated Jews, determined by this continuous concentrated effort to distinguish themselves, created a Jewish type that is recognizable everywhere. Instead of being defined by nationality or religion, Jews were being transformed into a social group whose members shared certain psychological attributes and reactions, the sum total of which was supposed to constitute "Jewishness." In other words, Juda-ism became a psychological quality and the Jewish question became an involved personal problem for every individual Jew."

Adam S. Rust @asrust.bsky.social · 1d

The ping pong of the Prussian government's position on Jewish civic and political rights during the early 19th century turned on whether Prussia controlled eastern territories containing the "bad" type of Jew.

"The real turning point in the social history of German Jews came not in the year of the Prussian defeat, but two years later, when, in 1808, the government passed the municipal law giv-ing full civic, though not political, rights to the Jews. In the peace treaty of 1807, Prussia had lost with her eastern provinces the majority of her Jewish population; the Jews left within her territory were "protected Jews" in any event, that is, they already enjoyed civic rights in the form of individual privileges. The municipal emancipation only legalized these privileges, and outlived the general emancipation decree of 1812; Prussia, having regained Posen and its Jewish masses after the defeat of Napoleon, practically rescinded the decree of 1812, which now..."

"...would have meant political rights even for poor Jews, but left the municipal law intact."

Adam S. Rust @asrust.bsky.social · 1d

Also the passage above is giving me a sense of what Arendt is getting at when she distinguishes the social and the political version of the Jewish question. Social questions are "hearts and minds" questions, political questions are questions of legal and political structures.

Adam S. Rust @asrust.bsky.social · 1d

The sentence "It has been one of the most unfortunate facts in the history of the Jewish people that only its enemies, and almost never its friends, understood that the Jewish question was a political one." giving me a thousand mile stare feeling.

"Jews who heard the strange compliment that they were exceptions, exceptional Jews, knew quite well that it was this very ambiguity-that they were Jews and yet presumably not like Jews-which opened the doors of society to them. If they desired this kind of intercourse, they tried, therefore, "to be and yet not to be Jews."2

The seeming paradox had a solid basis in fact. What non-Jewish society demanded was that the newcomer be as "educated" as itself, and that, although he not behave like an "ordinary Jew," he be and produce something out of the ordinary, since, after all, he was a Jew. All advocates of emancipation called for assimilation, that is, adjustment to and reception by, society, which they considered either a preliminary condition to Jewish emancipation or its automatic consequence. In other words, whenever those who actually tried to improve Jewish conditions attempted to think of the Jewish question from the point of view of the Jews themselves, they immediately approached it merely in its social aspect. It has been one of the most unfortunate facts in the history of the Jewish people that only its enemies, and almost never its friends, understood that the Jewish question was a political one."

Adam S. Rust @asrust.bsky.social · 1d

Read "odd" in the skeet above as "hard to parse in a way that cashes out".

Adam S. Rust @asrust.bsky.social · 1d

Gotta confess I find the opening section for this chapter a little odd. Hoping Arendt's fleshing out of these ideas in the chapter will clear things up.

Adam S. Rust @asrust.bsky.social · 1d

This footnote only really works if you give maximum generosity to the qualifier "less endangered" as indicating a difference of degree. And even then it is a bit confounding to an American reader. Arendt never quite got a handle on US racial politics.

"1. Although Jews stood out more than other groups in the homogeneous populations of European countries, it does not follow that they are more threatened by discrimination than other groups in America. In fact, up to now, not the Jews but the Negroes-by nature and history the most unequal among the peoples of America-have borne the burden of social and economic discrimination.

This could change, however, if a political movement ever grew out of this merely social discrimination. Then Jews might very suddenly become the principal objects of hatred for the simple reason that they, alone among all other groups, have themselves, within their history and their religion, expressed a well-known principle of separation. This is not true of the Negroes or Chinese, who are therefore less endangered politically, even though they may differ more from the majority than the Jews."

Adam S. Rust @asrust.bsky.social · 1d

Equality as a working principle for political organization basically leads to something like the rule of law, equality as an intrinsic feature of individuals can lead to distinctions between normal and abnormal humans. Arendt probably winding up to how this creates problems.

"Equality of condition, though it is certainly a basic requirement for justice, is nevertheless among the greatest and most uncertain ventures of modern mankind. The more equal conditions are, the less explanation there is for the differences that actually exist between people; and thus all the more unequal do individuals and groups become. This perplexing consequence came fully to light as soon as equality was no longer seen in terms of an omnipotent being like God or an unavoidable common destiny like death. Whenever equality becomes a mundane fact in itself, without any gauge by which it may be measured or explained, then there is one chance in a hundred that it will be recognized simply as a working principle of a political organization in which otherwise unequal people have equal rights; there are ninety-nine chances that it will be mis-taken for an innate quality of every individual, who is "normal" if he is like everybody else and "abnormal" if he happens to be different. This perversion of equality from a political into a social concept is all the more dangerous when a society leaves but little space for special groups and individuals, for then their differences become all the more conspicuous."

Adam S. Rust @asrust.bsky.social · 1d

Arendt opening the chapter "The Jews and Society" drawing a distinction between the motivations for political antisemitism, arising from Jewish distinctiveness, and social discrimination, which arose because of Jewish integration into society. Curious where she will take this.

Adam S. Rust @asrust.bsky.social · 2d

NYC cannot stand the thought of California having more of anything can they?

Adam S. Rust @asrust.bsky.social · 2d

For Arendt, perhaps the most decisive factor in French antisemitism never developing into a totalitarian ideology was France's lackadaisical commitment to its empire. For Arendt, it looks like the intersection of antisemitism and imperialism is the secret sauce of totalitarianism.

Adam S. Rust @asrust.bsky.social · 2d

This whole section discussing the national Jew/foreign Jew distinction is a first time the discussion of antisemitism has really shed some light on our current anti-immigrant moment. It really captures a double accounting ("we don't want the BAD immigrants") that is important to Trump supporters.

"56. For the surprising continuity in French antisemitic arguments, compare, forinstance, Charles Fourier's picture of the Jew "Iscariote" who arrives in France with 100,000 pounds, establishes himself in a town with six competitors in his field, crushes all the competing houses, amasses a great fortune, and returns to Germany (in Théorie des quatre mouvements, 1808, Oeuvres Complètes, 88 ff.) with Giraudoux's picture of 1939: "By an infiltration whose secret I have tried in vain to detect, hundreds of thousands of Ashkenasim, who escaped from the Polish and Rumanian Ghettos, have entered our country... eliminating our fellow citizens and, at the same time, ruining their professional customs and traditions... and defying all investigations of census, taxes and labor." In Pleins Pouvoirs, 1939.

Adam S. Rust @asrust.bsky.social · 2d

Arendt drawing attention to the distinction made by some French antisemites between native French Jews and foreign Jews "invading" from Eastern Europe. Familiar conceptual distinction in our own political moment.

Adam S. Rust @asrust.bsky.social · 2d

French Left antisemitism continues into the early to mid 19th century because of the Rothschild financial backing of, in turn, the restored Bourbon monarchy and later Napoleon III.

Adam S. Rust @asrust.bsky.social · 2d

Arendt points out that until the Dreyfus Affair, the French Left viewed its antisemitism as being of a piece with its anticlericalism. (Cf. the New Atheists of the early 2000s on evangelical Christianity and Islam.)

Adam S. Rust @asrust.bsky.social · 2d

Fascinating discussion of how French antisemitism was left coded in the 18th century, but became right coded in the 19th century. This is the sort of fact that a friend of mine points to when he asks "do you ever wonder why you believe in anything?"

"French antisemitism, moreover, is as much older than its European counterparts as is French emancipation of the Jews, which dates back to the end of the eighteenth century. The representatives of the Age of Enlightenment who prepared the French Revolution despised the Jews as a matter of course; they saw in them the backward remnants of the Dark Ages, and they hated them as the financial agents of the aristocracy. The only articulate friends of the Jews in France were conservative writers who denounced anti-Jewish attitudes as "one of the favorite theses of the eighteenth century."51 For the more liberal or radical writer it had become almost a tradition to warn against the Jews as barbarians who still lived in the patriarchal form of government and recognized no other state. During and after the French Revolution, the French clergy and French aristocrats added their voices to the general anti-Jewish sentiment, though for other and more material reasons. They accused the revolutionary government of having ordered the sale of clerical property to pay "the Jews and merchants to whom the government is indebted." These old arguments, somehow kept alive through the never-ending struggle between Church and State in France, supported the general violence and embitterment which had been touched off by other and more modern forces at the end of the century.

Mainly because of the strong clerical support of antisemitism, the French socialist movement finally decided to take a stand against antisemitic propaganda in the Dreyfus Affair."