Tom Wolfe & Hunter S Thompson

Tom Wolfe as we have discovered enjoys to write in the style of Zola which is very detailed and full of description. On June 8th 1970, he wrote a piece in the New York Magazine called 'Radical Chic' which describes the adoption and promotion of radical political causes by celebrities, socialites and high society. Leonard Bernstein and his friends hosted a fundraiser party for the 'Black Panthers' ( black revolutionary socialist organisation). Wolfe went along and simply observed the party, its surroundings and the people there in great detail.

It struck me that the piece was so detailed and precise yet it started with a very brief time frame 'at 2 or 3 or 4am' which highlights that in this moment there was no sense of time as it wasn't important to all of these people having such a good time getting drunk. The sentences that follow are very long and detailed using many commas to break it up. There are also a few short, to the point sentences 'He felt groggy' that just simply tell the audience details that may help them to build up an image. There are many strong adjectives used throughout the piece that give us additional detail. 

Tom Wolfe writing style is very effective but it is not the usual writing style of the news. The news is less detailed and structured to who, what, where, when and includes facts not description.

There is a lot of dialogue in this piece which give us an incite into exactly what the people are like in his vision and how they react to certain things. Some may wonder how he actually captures the exact words of the people as back in this time tape recorders were a very expensive piece of equipment. It was decided that he must of wrote it all exactly how the people spoke. He also uses phonetic dialogue to emphasise sounds to us such as the sound of the French man eating which has no meaning but was obviously a vivid sound at the time. The way people talk tells us a lot about them, their class, what type of mood they are in and even if they are drunk or not. Colour writing is where you paint a picture of what happens which Tom Wolfe does continuously throughout the piece.

It was interesting that Tom Wolfe went into such detail on the 'Black Panthers' disregarding their politics but concentrating on their clothing, their style and the way they looked. He went into detail on how cool they seemed, the way they walked and the fact that they wore sunglasses and carried a gun. This shows that Wolfe writes more in a feature style as he concentrates on the fashion and how people look rather than what they are known for.

Wolfe is obsessed with detail and writes using a lot of lists about what he can see. At one point he lists all of the people at the party as well as explaining what the room was like which at times was hard to keep up with as you forgot who he was talking about. Writing in lots of lists is a style of writing called automated writing. Wolfe doesn't always say the exact detail of things he writes cleverly and uses associations to jog the readers memory and get them engages in what he is saying. For example if he was explaining a table he would say, 'The table was the colour that tables usually are'.

Tom Wolfe and Hunter S Thompson are the founders of factually based entertainment but with added drama/fiction such as programmes like Top Gear. Dickens was propaganda and what we know to be the old Journalism.


Kentucky Derby by Hunter S Thompson was a realistic piece based on people getting drunk and being sick at horse racing. The majority of them were males who were drinking and betting on the horses having a good night. Thompson chose this event as he was bored and thought it would be a different event to witness. Like Nietzsche said 'boredom destroys Gods.'

Like Wolfe the approach is similar in the writing style as it is detailed following a bunch of people who are of middle and upper class. This makes the style slightly different to Wolfe's piece as the language changes throughout depending on what type of class the person is who's speaking. Both pieces build up a clear image of what is happening through the description. They are also both opinionated pieces which isn't necessarily proper journalism. The style of writing is more 'Gonzo' based which explains the experience and opinions of the person writing it. This is the most common style of New Journalism that follow Gonzo type pieces leaving out the structured layout of the news writing. Both pieces are examples of mimetic narration where you write the structure like it is a film. It is a basic narration with lots of added bits into it.

When cleaning up quotes for proper journalism we can end up changing what the person actually said. To prevent this you need to be honest and think weather the person saying it would notice or complain. Punctuation in a quote can also be just as effective as the quote itself. The correct use of ellipsis (...) is not for when you cut away a quote to fill it in. For example having a (quote)... (quote) this is not needed. You should use it when the person trails off in their speech to emphasise that is what they are doing.

The New Journalism

The New Journalism (this is the final topic for philosophy- EVER!)

American Journalism- brief history

The Penny papers in America- deeply partisan- merchants and politicians. (Papers you can buy for a penny controlled and funded by political parties business men who portrayed their view. Can be useful at times for finding prices of a shovel etc but sometimes could find out about someone who sold rubbish shovels.) Targeted at normal people working class and not the elite.

Mid 19^th century objectivity became a factor in journalism because of the creation of the wire service- The Associated Press needed objectivity to be profitable. The only way you can sell news to a large amount of people is to make it true (news should be objective).

The Yellow Press- Late 19^th century, the first New Journalism. Citizen Kane. The idea of shaking up the news papers making them more interesting and full of big, dramatic pictures.  This was because at the time not everyone there spoke English used simple words. This is where the Sensationalisation of them began where a physical reaction to what you are reading was needed e.g. Shock, loss, crime, dramatic etc. Huge emotive headlines- human interest stories and shocking stories that make the audience react to them. They wanted to appeal to the working class and interest the growing middle class who were wealthy. They made it colour and it looked like television.

The new journalism without soul some people say about Yellow Journalism; all the stories are full of sex, sin and violence.

America 1960s and 70s similar to Hearst and the Yellow Press. Great deal of political and social upheaval, fighting, foreign wars with even more serious military threats building overseas. In the time of Hearst there was the Spanish American War and Citizen Kane moment where a journalist was sent to war but there was no war there. He said if you give me the pictures I will give you the war which he caused to get some decent pictures. Vietnam war happened in the 1960s and 70s.

Journalist recorded the events of the day- normally in a formulaic way- who, what, where, when, why etc. The New Journalism was an attempt to record events mirroring the language and the style of the events. Letting it bleed into the copy (the events of the day).

Political and Cultural scene

1960s was turbulent- great hope for John Kennedy the great speaker president at the time. He was someone everyone looked up to and wanted to be. He was assassinated in 1963, disastrous war in Vietnam. They started to conscript people into the army to go to Vietnam. Most of the wealthy and elite were allowed to avoid this and were protected from going.  Someone like Mohammad Ali refused to go to Vietnam.

Demographic reason- Baby Boom created a powerful youth culture- Baby Boomers hitting their teens in the 1960s making America wealthy as a lot of them went to university in their teens. In the 60s and 70s marched against the war in Vietnam and marched for civil rights. Police weren’t as respected and the voice of change was from the young people in America.

They have changed American society dramatically and are now in retirement and are facing retirement age.

Sexual Revolution- mid 1960s is where it became legally accepted in America for women to use the contraceptive pill. Existentialism links with choice and the fact that women have freedom now and can have casual sex. Reichian: Free Love- links with Freud, bad thoughts shouldn’t be let out. Reich said to be happy you need orgasms and to let it all out. It links with the Feminist Revolution.

 The student movement- worldwide protests of 1968- civil rights, Black Power marches for equal rights, use of LSD drugs introduced by the CIA to access altered thinking of counterculture and to be able to control them easier. Police battered students who kept marching and protesting.

The government wanted to ban LSD and punish people which then created hidden drug taking. Prohibition of drugs created subcultures such as Hippies, communes, collective and established much of youth culture to make it be viewed as deviant.

Music was central for Existentialism and Sartre, jazz was authentic and true (Heidegger phrase). The music of 1960s was a full frontal attack on the norms, drug fuelled when they were written (Doors) and anti-establishment (Bob Dylan) with the aim to subvert and be political. The world is happening out there and you should get involved.

Influence of Existentialism

Ideas informed by Existentialism- Heidegger's Authenticity, Sartre's bad faith. There is no meaning and no path you have to follow you create meaning by your actions. Existentialism scanner when it scans you if wont see your past or where you are now it will just see choices and the choices that you make. The most interesting choice of all that you have is your next one. Key ideas are freedom and choice for example Fanon’s view of a path to freedom and choice. Fanon’s view of a path to freedom is accelerated choice (violence). An act of violence is an extreme expression of choice with real immediate impact. To get to the point of freedom we have to push and use violence to get us to that point much quicker.

Existentialism view- we are not our past its our choices in the future that count. Malcolm X- violence is valid. Anti-establishment feeling, there is a policeman inside your head, he must be destroyed- seeped into journalism.

Journalist question whether basing stories o press releases, press conferences and official statements was really objective and more importantly a true reflection of events (bad faith). New forms of journalism began to emerge 1960s as it started to ‘bleed into the copy’.

Journalists began to focus on setting the plot, sounds, feelings, direct quotes and images whilst still being as careful as before with the facts and if they were true. They tried to reflect what was happening accurately.

This alternative journalism was personal and expressed an individual point of view. It was also unconventional, disagreeable, disruptive, unfriendly and against the power structure. It’s good for journalists to be awkward.

There was no super structure anymore as it started from the Elite in the top before but has now filtered down to the individual. You were allowed to be subjective and write from a view point which you couldn’t before.

Shift in form of narration from DIEGETIC TO MIMETIC

Telling (just telling what happened) to Seeing (attention to detail, inner working of someone mind via their setting, what they wear, how they speak.)

Marshall McLuhan – hot (explicit what it is trying to tell you- Daily Echo- no freedom of choice about interpreting the information yourself) and cold media (this is the scene, ambiguous, interpret the media yourself to bring a meaning).

In New Journalism ‘Objectivity’ was important ‘subjective experience’ accuracy and facts were still important but they paid a lot of attention to detail. – Tom Wolfe is the most famous example.

Wolfe was straight forward in his writing and was a huge fan of Emile Zola who influenced him. Zola is one of the greatest writers of natural realism. A role description of what was happening was the style to let you interpret what happens. The book ‘The New Journalism’ is a good book.

When Wolfe entered journalism the first thing he noticed was the status competition. The competition varied though, the reporters are in the ‘scoop competition’ – First for breaking news- BBC etc.

If you weren’t in the news, you were a feature writer. Wolfe describes the shift in feature writing. It tried to replicate what was happening in the real world to try and put it down on paper exactly how people saw it. It is harder and needs a huge amount of time, to soak up the scene and pay attention to detail. You learn everything that you can and what they do during interviews.

New Journalism P46&47 tell you how to write an excellent feature. He tells you who to read Zola and Dickens.

1-    Scene by Scene construction- telling the story in scenes. You need to be there and you need to soak up the detail to write down exactly what the atmosphere is like.

2- Realistic dialogue- involves the reader more than any other single device. It also defines a character more quickly and effectively. Listen to how people speak and capture their dialogue accurately. This is hard and can take a lot of time.

2-    Third person point of view- giving the reader the feeling of being inside the characters mind. Interview this person, research them to find out how they think and feel etc.

4- Recording of everyday gestures, habits, manners, style of furniture, behaviour. superiors. Concentrate on tiny detail that can open up to give you a picture to explain how this person is like. Symbolic of people’s status life.

Totalitarian Seminar

This method analyses methods and facts of regimes. It seeks to control and manipulate all aspects of people including their private life by taking total control. The nature movement is related to Hegel and his Hegelian way of understanding totalitarian things. According to Popper and Hannah Arendt Hegel is totalitarianism. Nature if progressing to the laws of utopia of history.

There is a metaphor with Darwin and his idea of stylism and Nazism which is liberal and biological. It follows that Darwin found mutations occur naturally and the ones that best adapted to the environment were able to thrive and reproduce to carry on forward such as the appendix. This was a metaphor for the bourgeoisie class that needed to be rid of. It was like with Nazism medicine where we are devolving natural defects needed to help nature along.

In the Stanford prison experiment the victims were selected and the results showed that nature decides who is eliminated and it is evident that terror becomes total. The rules supreme when no one is in its way. It basis its self on loneliness manipulating the human condition and destroying relationships in society. There is a constant threat in human behaviour.

Everything is inside the state and not outside of it. Individuality makes it difficult to control hence terror and ideology. Orwell said that 'war is peace, freedom is slavery and poverty is plenty.' Popper pointed out that it is often used as justification for authority. Rousseau argued to be 'forced to be free.' Gypsies as well as Jews were persecuted by the Nazi's. 

Eichmann was accused of transporting the Jews on the trains to be killed. He was actually charged with crimes against humanity. According to Arendt he was only transporting Jews on the train and doing his job. However she sees the crime as not thinking about the situation and going against his morals of what he knows is right or wrong. He 'failed to think, and he failed to act.'

The crime against humanity was actually invented to get people like Eichmann who were actually innocent really into trouble. He only went to work to do his job with the trains and was a man that obeyed the law and wasn't a bad person. If he had of gone against the Nazi's and stopped transporting people on the trains he would have been killed anyway so really could not win. Arendt saw the Eichmann trial as a stitch up and didn't like the idea of it. 

The Darwin theory is a total explanation of the environment and is the only theory you need to know. Pluralism is the opposite of totalitarianism where you can think what you like and there are many different ideas on things. 

Liberalism and pluralism are derived from Kant as it is believed what we think now will be different to what we think next week as our thoughts will change.

It is possible to control thought by manipulating the language to control peoples mind(Orwell 1984). The media choose certain language to make people think a certain way. You can manipulate them to be scared of thinking anything else or their own way. The way things are said or the wording of certain things change over time such as 'ba ba black sheep' becoming racist and being changed to 'ba ba colourful sheep.' 

Thought crime is where you aren't even able to think certain things even though you can't help thinking them. Arendt says every new person born has to start from the beginning with learning which is why totalitarianism cant last.

Stanford Prison Experiment

This was a simulation study of psychology of imprisonment in Stanford Prison 1971. It was to see how people respond to a cruel environment without clear rules. It was a mock prison set up that followed events of Abu Ghraib in 2003 in Iraq where people were tortured and abused. Photos were released of how the people were treated and it was revealed they had bags on their heads and were treated like animals.

Images were similar to the Stamford Prison study however they weren't actually doing these things to them. A set of social psychological factors that can make people do anything they wouldn't have expected were given. The experiment was life like and tested the power of the environment. 70 men volunteered and were given psychological tests. 24 of these men who were healthy and normal were chosen. Half of them were selected to be the guards and half were selected as the prisoners and were given uniforms for each role. Prisoners were given a number each which they were referred to throughout along with a chain on their foot to remind them of their loss of freedom and a gown.

The guards felt awkward at first with giving orders. John Wayne became more extreme and decided to become the worst cruel prison guard you could be. He decided he would see how far he could take it before someone would tell him to stop. The prisoners rebelled and barricaded the cells and took off their numbers. The guards became to think of the prisoners as dangerous people and stripped the prisoners naked and used fire extinguishers to break their doors down. The study became remarkable from this point as human nature transformed rapidly.

The guards punished the prisoners by taunting them and not letting them sleep etc. Prisoner 8612 was the next key thing since the rebellion as he ended up having an emotional breakdown. The guards didn't believe or realise what they were doing. They escalated their power to taunt, humiliate and treat the prisoners badly. After the 4th day it turned sexual and the roles and environment were so powerful that they ended up treating prisoners as though they had done wrong. The prisoners started to break down with stress.

It was mistreatment and they became caught up in the events taking place without realising the extent of it. A psychology graduate visited the prison environment  and saw prisoners with paper bags over their heads. She found it demeaning and couldn't watch this mistreatment. She couldn't understand how they couldn't see what she did. The power given transformed people and the experiment was shut down after 6 days due to her making them realise the extent of it.

The Milgram Experiment

This experiment was to see how far people would go to inflict suffering on others when ordered to do so if they believe it is the right thing to do. Stanley Milgram wanted to see if law abiding citizens would give others an electric shock. Twelve members of the public arrived for a memory test well that is what they believed it to be. They were introduced to other people who they believed was a volunteer however it was the person running the test.

They believed it was a scientific study of memory when in actual fact it was obedience over authority. Each person was given a specific role of a teacher who applies the electric shock and a learner who receives them who was actually an actor. They observed the person being strapped and restrained to the chair ready to be shocked. The volts went from 15 all the way up to 450.

The teacher was given a list of words the learner had to memorise and had to increase the voltage of the shock every time they got it wrong. They wanted to see if the teachers called a stop to the test or obey the professor and increase the voltage in the belief that they are advancing science.

The teachers were expressing concern throughout the test but were told to continue by the professor who told them that the experiment requires them to go on. It was evident people were inflicting serious pain on others when told to do so. They weren't away that the sounds were pre-recorded and the electric shocks weren't actually happening. 

At one stage the learner went silent and could have been dead or unconscious from the shocks but the participant still went on to increase the shocks as silent meant the wrong answer.  They believed that science produces beneficial findings to society so there was a good reason to do this.

9 out of 12 participants went all the way to the end of the experiment. In the original experiment over 65% of the people went to 450 volts. At the end they were all immediately told the real situation of the experiment and what was happening. The participants  looked under stress but went on to do what the professor told them to do as it wasn't causing any long term harm on the people. 

The man that didn't carry on the experiment and did stop due to his own will said it sounded like the Nazi's in Germany and that he didn't want to conform when he didn't think it was right.

The Origins of Totalitarianism - Hannah Arendt

Totalitarianism

Totalitarianism is a political system in which the state holds complete authority over the society. They try to control all aspects of people’s public and private lives as much as they can.

Totalitarianism was first developed in the 1920s positively by the Italian fascists. It became prominent in Western anti-communist political discourse during the Cold War era to highlight similarities between Nazi Germany and other fascist regimes on one hand and Soviet communism on the other.

The political and societal goals and practises of militant Islam have also been labelled as totalitarianism.

The idea of totalitarianism a ‘total’ political power by state was formulated in 1923 by Giovanni Amendola who described Italian Fascismas a system different from conventional dictatorships. The term was later assigned a positive meaning in the writings of Giovanni Gentile, Italy’s most popular philosopher and leading theorist of fascism. He used the term “totalitario” to refer to the structure and goals of the new state. The new state was to provide the ‘total representation of the nation and total guidance of national goals.’ He described totalitarianism as a society in which the ideology of the state had influence, if not power, over most of its citizens.

Whoever rose to power developed entirely new political institutions and destroyed all social, legal and political traditions of the country. Totalitarian government created a mass movement in shift of power and shifted the centre of power from the army to the police. Present totalitarian government have developed from a one party system to operating to a system of morals where it was difficult to predict their course of action.

If we consider that despite many variations the government did not change in the two and a half thousand years that separate Plato and Kant we interpret totalitarianism as a form of modern tyranny that is a lawless government where power is controlled by one man. Traits throughout the tyranny tradition is fear as the principle of action of the people by their ruler and similarly fear of the ruler by the people.

There was a sense of natural law which created the standard of what is right and wrong. The law of history and nature is applied to mankind. Totalitarianism policy claims to transform the human specie into an active carrier of the law. The difference between the totalitarianism and other concepts of law is that the totalitarianism policy does not replace one set of laws with another, does not establish its own consensus or create a new form of legality.

Positive laws were changeable according to circumstances but were designed to function as stabilising factors for the ever changing movements of men. When the Nazis talk about the law of nature and the Bolsheviks talk about the law of history, they both no longer stabilise the source of authority for the actions of mortal men. Darwin’s idea of man as the product of a natural development that doesn’t stop with the present species of human being just as Bolshevik’s belief in a class struggle as the expression of the law of history lies Marx notion of society as the product of a historical movement which works on its own law of motion to the end of historical times when it will abolish itself.

The difference between Marx historical and Darwin’s naturalistic approach has frequently been pointed out in favour of Marx. It turns out that not the actual achievement but the basic philosophies of both men are the movement of history and are the same as natural life appears to also be historical. The ‘natural law’ of the survival of the fittest is just as much a historical law as Marx’s law of the survival of the most progressive class.

If it is the law of nature to eliminate everything that is harmful and unfit to live it would mean the end of nature itself if the new categories of the harmful and unfit to live could not be found. Terror becomes total when it becomes independent of all opposition and rules when nobody stands in its way. If lawfulness is the essence of non-tyrannical government and lawlessness is the essence of tyranny, then terror is the essence of totalitarianism domination.

From the totalitarianism point of view the fact that men are born and die is just an annoying interference with higher forces. Terror executes on the spot the death sentences that Nature is supposed to have pronounced on races or individuals who are ‘unfit to live’ or History on ‘dying classes’, without waiting for the slower and less efficient processes of nature or history themselves.

Laws in free societies only state what people should not do without telling people what they should do and how they should behave. The definition of what governments needed was what Montesquieu called a ‘principle of action’ which was different between each form of government and would inspire government and citizens in their public activity. Terror in the totalitarian government is not sufficient to inspire and guide human behaviour.

Total terror selects its victims according to objective standards and its executioners with as complete a disregard as possible for the candidates conviction and sympathies.

The aim of totalitarianism education was to destroy the capacity to form convictions. Himmler’s organisational invention was where he selected candidates from photographs according to racial criteria. It was nature that decided who was eliminated but who was to be trained as an executioner. No guiding principle of behaviour was given it was taken itself from the realm of human action such as virtue, Honor, fear. It introduced an entirely new principle into public affairs that dispenses with human will to action and appeals to the craving need for insight into the law of movement according to which the terror functions and private destinies depend.

The process may decide that those that eliminate races and individuals today or the members of dying classes are those who must be sacrificed. Totalitarianism needs an ideology that gives an equal role of the executioner and the role of the victim. Before Hitler and Stalin the great political potentialities of the ideologies were discovered.

Ideologies are known for their scientific character combining the scientific approach with results of philosophical relevance and pretend to be scientific philosophy. An ideology is what its name indicates: it is the logic of an idea. Its subject is history to which the ‘idea’ is applied unfolding a process of constant change.

The idea of ideology is neither Plato’s eternal essence grasped by the eyes of the mind nor Kant’s principle of reason but has become an explanation.

All ideologies contain totalitarian elements but these are fully developed only by totalitarianism movements creating the impression that only racism and communism are totalitarian in character.

Ideologies tend to explain not what is but what becomes, what is born and passes away. They are concerned with the element of motion and history in the sense of the world. They are always aimed towards history but proceed from the basis of nature explaining historical matters and reducing them to matters of nature. It tries to explain the past, the total knowledge of the present and the reliable prediction of the future.

Secondly it is independent of all experience from which it cannot learn anything new. The sixth sense is provided by the ideology taught by the educational institutions to train the ‘political soldiers’.

Thirdly since the ideologies have no power to transform reality they achieve this through experience. Once the premise is established its point of departure can not be taught by reality.

Isolation may be the beginning of terror and usually happens to rule over men who are isolated together. Terror leaves no time for private life and destroys men’s capacities for experience. Isolation in the political sphere is called loneliness inn the sphere of social intercourse. These factors are not the same as I can be isolated in a situation I cannot act upon because nobody is with me without being lonely. Similarly I can be lonely in a situation where I feel deserted by human company.

Isolation concerns political life and tends to affect man in his work whereas loneliness concerns human life as a whole.

Hegel said that ‘nobody has understood me except one; and he is also misunderstood’ from his deathbed.

The crisis of our time and its central experience have lead to an entirely new form of government  where there is potential for an ever present danger to stay with us from now on. There is also the truth that every end in history contains a beginning; this beginning is the promise, the only ‘message’.

Totalitarianism Lecture

Totalitarianism Lecture

A totalitarianism regime is Plato Republic who is against these ideas, contract theory, idea that the powers of the State should be limited even by Hobbes and Liberalism- personal freedom of the State.

It was believed that ‘fascism is for liberty’ which the only thing that can be a real liberty is the State and nothing human or spiritual exists and has a less value outside of the State. Outside of the State there cant be neither individuals nor groups.

 Imperialism was seen as a precursor to totalitarianism because it contained many different traits which the new regime could use. One of these traits was the development of racism where you are based on your genes and not what you have done.

Our individuality makes us difficult to control and gather up into a collective movement. State terror and ideology are both used to destroy this individuality. The purpose of the terror is not to murder lots of people but to destroy their individuality and ability to act against the government even to think about the thought of acting (Orwell).

Ideology compliments the policy of terror and eliminates the capacity for individual thought and experience among the executioners themselves. Orwell ‘war is peace; freedom is slavery; poverty is plenty’.

Ideology is also a type of specialist knowledge as Popper pointed out is often used as justification for the authority of rulers. It is also a way to avoid responsibility. The ideology whether natural or historical movement gives them the ‘total explanation of the past, the total knowledge of the present and the reliable prediction of the future’. –Origins of Totalitarianism p469

Ideology frees the mind from the constraints of common sense and reality.

For Hannah Arendt (writer of the origins of totalitarianism) the first move the Nazis made on the road to the ‘Final Solution’ was to deny Jews citizenship making them stateless and removing their rights. She argues that rights are only relevant within nations not ‘natural rights’. These stateless people without any rights were perfect victims for a totalitarian regime.

The Jews were a rootless community based on race. The Nazis saw them a  rival master race and a model to be emulated and overtaken.

To be civilised human beings we need to inhabit a man-made world of stable structures. Being part of a society enables us to be civilised and gives us access to a shared reality.

Control and Language- control minds

‘Don’t you see that the whole aim of newspeak is to narrow the range of thought? In the end we shall make thought crime literally impossible, because there will be no words to express it.’(1984)

Orwell was horrified by the capacity of totalitarian regimes to attempt to control minds by manipulating language. Thought takes place in purely linguistic terms. Therefore if you can control language then you can control thought. Mind control may be possible through manipulation of language.

In 1984 the Ministry of Peace organises war, the Ministry of Love organises the police and the Ministry of Plenty gathers taxes. In the novel Winstons job is removing articles from the archive which contradict the current and ever changing line on the party.

Personal responsibility in a dictatorship?

In May 1960, Israeli Secret Service kidnapped Nazi fugitive Adolf Eichmann in Argentina. He stood trial in Jerusalem for crimes he committed during the ‘Final Solution’. Eichmann’s responsibility during the Holocaust had been the organisation of the transport of millions of Jews from across Europe to concentration camps a function he carried out efficiently.

For the Israelis the trial served three purposed: Trying Eichman for his crimes, educating the world about the nature and extent of the Holocaust and the legitmatising of the Jewish state.

For Arendt it was a shock to see Eichmann who spoke in different clichés` and was proud of being a ‘law abiding citizen’ she concluded that it was not necessary to possess such wickedness to commit great crimes. She did however agree with the judgement that Arendt be put to death but disagreed with the reasons and the way the trial went. She believed that Eichmann’s crime was non thinking and choice is crucial to the existentialist at this point.

Eichmann claimed that when making the final solution he was acting from obedience that he had derived from a particular moral concept from his reading  of Kant. Kant’s Categorical Imperative: Act only according to that maxim whereby you can, at the same time, will that it should become a universal law.

He attempted to explain his version of Kantianism and Arendt responds that it was outrageous and incomprehensible since Kant’s moral philosophy is closely bound up with man’s faculty of judgement which rules out blind obedience.

Satre claimed that the only thing he cannot escape is the need to choose. But the possibility of recreating oneself is frightening and people will try to avoid freedom. This is ‘bad faith’.

Arendt rejects the philosophical interpretation that Eichmann is neither perverted or sadistic. In her view he just acted according to brutal law that became normal and normalised. What was his crime according to Arendt was that he failed to think, he failed to judge and therefore failed to choose.

She believed that even if eighty million Germans had done as they did that would be no excuse for you. What had become banal was the failure to think, this is Eichmann’s crime according to Arendt. Thinking is the judgement made from the interaction with the internal plurality.

Arendt is saying that we must look at our personal judgement (thinking) rather than the law in order to know how to act. Law may turn out to be a criminal as in Nazi Germany. In which case we have a responsibility to oppose bad law even a responsibility in those conditions be defined as disobedience- indeed sometimes disobedience is exactly our responsibility and this is what Eichmann failed to grasp.