The book considers violence as a phenomenon. It discusses the end to the revulsion against violence after World War II and the early civil rights moment. Considers violence in historical perspective.

El término «violencia», en su sentido más elemental, refiere al daño ejercido sobre las personas por parte de otros seres humanos. Los experimentos totalitarios del siglo XX ampliaron este uso de la violencia a una escala y una intensidad inéditas en la historia de la humanidad, y es en este contexto donde cabe encuadrar esta obra perenne de Hannah Arendt. ( )

Now this was a very interesting read. I expected this to be book about nature of violence but it is actually book that looks at rise of violence in 1960's during the student riots that shook the Western world and also had an occurrence in the East at the time but (as expected) with lesser effect than in the West.

Author makes a very good distinction between power and violence and what links them. Power as a means of controlling the society through majority of populace and violence that gets used when power is not possible in order to subdue the populace by minority [of populace]. Once power that-is gets challenged and it does not have proper answer to critique it starts to lose its authority and this is something every politician is scared sh**less off. This is why it is important to ridicule every idiotic decision government makes - laughter is sometimes more powerful weapon than actual weapon.

It is important to remember that knife-drawing never happens at the beginning but at the end and one needs to make sure that final moment never takes place.

With this in mind we are given rather disturbing picture of the 60's from where all the couch revolutionaries come from. I say couch revolutionaries because all these fiery philosophers are very akin to stock market analysts of our days - they will spit on the very society that gives them means to live (majority are professors) and they will talk whatever they think is the ultimate truth while constantly avoiding the fact that their speeches will incite the masses that are trying to find the way to communicate with the powers-to-be to change things for a better. And when finally proverbial sh*t hits the fan they will just stand aside and say "who, me? nooooo I was misunderstood". I find it very disturbing that people that live off the spoken word so blatantly disregard the power of the same spoken word.

So in 60's Left (same one as today) became more and more violent (same as today), led by philosophers arguing that violent action is required to force the change. This was a shift because so far at that moment call to violence was coming usually from the Right while Left was usually concentrated on peaceful (or as peaceful as possible, or even short-lived violent approach) action. So turning to the violent ways was unexpected for the Left but that is what happened for the first time in 60's.

So what was the goal? Roots for rise of violence in Left can be found in what author calls loss of trust in the institutions and growing disaffection of people with the way states were ran and frustration because there seems to be no way of initiating the change through normal means. Governments and other state institutions got heavily bureaucratized in such a way that ordinary people get frustrated because they dont have anyone to contact to talk about their problems. Entire government basically became one after another commission that has no responsibility for anything, everything feels like a quick sand. But even in that case current governments are elected through democratic process so what is alternative? I agree with author that change needs to be done on existing system because pursuing some utopian dream will only bring tyranny through forced change - simply for a reason that such change brings vacuum that gets quickly populated by very aggressive and power hungry people (usually very unscrupulous) that can not be removed from power that easily (just look at Soviet Revolution or last year when it became obvious how unwilling are politicians to denounce their powers once they attain them). Chaos is never good starting point.

Author gives a very disturbing observations on how people during the riotous 60's started to raise important questions that were constantly addressed in a very sloppy way that laid the foundation for future discord (especially in case of racial questions). She shows how universities started to decay through introduction of ever more useless classes that become nothing more but verbal exercise of the futile kind. In the 1960's universities were tightly coupled to industrial and military endeavors and it was rightly so that students and academics wanted this to stop, but what was the result? Research (and people) from universities moved to private sectors thus leaving universities to develop more and more unproductive studies. I especially liked author's observations on rise of various studies about violence from almost everyone - from zoologists to political theoreticians that are nothing more than reiterations of already known facts.

Author also gives a very chilling (considering this was written in 1970) view of influence of science and technology - people from scientific fields (physical science, not metaphysical one) did not have much impact in the 60's but given time they would gain more and more (and that happened) until finally we dont end up in technocratic tyranny (where it seems we are going to, I hope this does not happen). And that will be tyranny no matter the prefix.

I like how author constantly brings forth the fact that humans are humans, we react to certain things in a certain way and as long despair and feeling of futility and frustration rises in populace (and current situation for me does not look much different than 60's) levels of violence will also rise. Government needs to find the way to connect back to the very people that gave them power and hopefully they will do it in a productive way like De Gaulle did in 60's that actually brought some change.

Very interesting read, sometimes dense (German passage were tough) but with good insight into working of government-politics-populace. Author does not seem to be pure theoretician but someone who has hands-on experience with how political activities can deviate in a matter of seconds.

Recommended. ( )

Hannah Arendt has some fascinating things to say about the difference between violence and power. This book couldn't be more timely given the invasion of Ukraine by Russia.

That said, her logic is glaringly broken when she diminishes the interests of Black students during the protests of the 60s, and this is shockingly out of place as a Jew who escaped the Nazis; to minimize the needs of a whole group of people given the racism of the time defies explanation.

Outside of this incongruity, it is a book worth reading given our seeming destiny to pursue aggression. ( )

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