Illusions of Sovereignty: Understanding Populist Crowds with Hannah Arendt

Abstract

This article reconstructs Hannah Arendt's theoretical arguments in relation to current authoritarian-populist crowds, which can be understood as organized mobs of the twenty-first century. Drawn from all classes and originating in societal and political disenfranchisement, in Arendt's understanding they are rebellious nihilists who falsely believe they represent the people as a whole while they exclude any citizens who do not share their tribal nationalism and leader worshiping. Illuminating conditions of their emergence, Arendt also helps to elucidate what drives the populist crowds’ illusions about an uncompromising “sovereign will” they and their leaders claim to embody. Such illusions benefit from broader modern trends eroding differences between facts, opinion, truth, and lies. In public environments suffering from destabilized factual truths, organized lies can easily fill a political vacuum generated by crises of political modernity. Unpacking interrelated theoretical trajectories, it is argued that an Arendtian framework can significantly contribute to the study of present-day authoritarian populism.