Hannah Arendt: Facing Tyranny
Preview: 6/27/2025 | 2mVideo has Closed Captions
Discover Hannah Arendt, one of the most fearless political writers of modern times.
Discover Hannah Arendt, one of the most fearless political thinkers of the 20th century, who transformed her time as a political prisoner and refugee during World War II into daring insights about totalitarianism which continue to resonate today.
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Support for American Masters is provided by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, AARP, Rosalind P. Walter Foundation, Judith and Burton Resnick, Blanche and Hayward Cirker Charitable Lead Annuity Trust, Koo...
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Hannah Arendt: Facing Tyranny
Preview: 6/27/2025 | 2mVideo has Closed Captions
Discover Hannah Arendt, one of the most fearless political thinkers of the 20th century, who transformed her time as a political prisoner and refugee during World War II into daring insights about totalitarianism which continue to resonate today.
Problems playing video? | Closed Captioning Feedback
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Learn Moreabout PBS online sponsorship(tense music) - [Narrator] Never has our future been more unpredictable.
Never have we depended so much on political forces that cannot be trusted to follow the rules of common sense.
Forces that look like sheer insanity if judged by the standards of other centuries.
- [Narrator] Hannah Arendt was a fearless thinker, and becomes one of the most prolific political writers of our time.
- [Narrator] Antisemitism had been that feature of her life.
- [Narrator] Hannah Arendt saw this.
She was there, she was living there.
(glass shattering) - [Narrator] She escapes Nazi Germany, and she boards a boat bound for the United States, and that's where she writes "The Origins of Totalitarianism."
- [Narrator] No one could ignore it.
It is too important.
At the same time, she becomes an American citizen.
McCarthyism takes hold.
It's very familiar.
- [Narrator] In the 1960s, she became the voice of American politics.
- [Narrator] Arendt sees this rise in violence that can threaten the norms and the institutions that preserve freedom in the United States.
- I had a member of my family killed.
- [Narrator] She sounds off a warning.
She says, you can actually destroy the republic from within.
- [Narrator] Crises of our time has brought forth an ever present danger that is only too likely to stay with us from now on.
The questions that my generation has been forced to live with.
What happened?
Why did it happen?
How did this happen?
Hannah Arendt’s reflections on being a refugee
Video has Closed Captions
Clip: 6/27/2025 | 1m 15s | Hannah Arendt became a stateless person in 1933 upon fleeing Germany to France. (1m 15s)
How Hannah Arendt developed the concept of "the banality of evil"
Video has Closed Captions
Clip: 6/27/2025 | 3m 40s | Hannah Arendt came up with the concept of “the banality of evil” during the trial of Adolf Eichmann. (3m 40s)
What sparked Hannah Arendt's ideas behind "The Origins of Totalitarianism"
Video has Closed Captions
Clip: 6/27/2025 | 2m 50s | Hannah Arendt came up with ideas for “The Origins of Totalitarianism” while observing Hitler. (2m 50s)
Why McCarthyism was familiar to Hannah Arendt
Video has Closed Captions
Clip: 6/27/2025 | 2m 1s | Hannah Arendt was teaching at Berkeley when McCarthyism took hold of the United States. (2m 1s)
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Support for American Masters is provided by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, AARP, Rosalind P. Walter Foundation, Judith and Burton Resnick, Blanche and Hayward Cirker Charitable Lead Annuity Trust, Koo...