Abstract
In her book, On Violence, Hannah Arendt addresses the events she was witness to in the 1960s. Arendt presents theories on violence through a historical context and explores the links between power, war, politics and violence. She informs the reader that power and violence are not the same; where one is absolute, the other cannot exist. Our research aim was to demonstrate how prescient her views were regarding the prognostication of the political animus that has occurred in America, especially through the evolution of technology. Our method in the the evaluation of this discourse was a line by line examination of the text of On Violence and assessing this evaluation against how the increasing attacks utilizing social platforms and cyber capabilities by U.S. competitors (foreign or domestic) are resulting in political vulnerability of the U.S. and the generally defined Western world. The public health security of American democracy is at risk through an inability, as individuals, to properly evaluate information, propaganda, misinformation, and disinformation from bad actors at home and abroad. Here we develop a perspective in which the political animus that started in the late 1960s becomes the foundation for our competitors’ development of sophisticated methods of cyber subversion, and effective use of asymmetric conflict through manipulation of our own social media platforms in order to divide Americans and subvert effective government.
Highlights
We worry about jobs, the economy, politics, and our health, but do we adequately ponder violence, and how it affects our lives, or at least how its punctuated incidence wedges itself into our affairs? When referring to violence, we should go beyond the mugging that occurs around the corner or the school yard brawl or the fisticuffs at the local bar in the early hours of the morning
Our research aim was to demonstrate how prescient her views were regarding the prognostication of the political animus that has occurred in America, especially through the evolution of technology
The economy, politics, and our health, but do we adequately ponder violence, and how it affects our lives, or at least how its punctuated incidence wedges itself into our affairs? When referring to violence, we should go beyond the mugging that occurs around the corner or the school yard brawl or the fisticuffs at the local bar in the early hours of the morning
Summary
The economy, politics, and our health, but do we adequately ponder violence, and how it affects our lives, or at least how its punctuated incidence wedges itself into our affairs? When referring to violence, we should go beyond the mugging that occurs around the corner or the school yard brawl or the fisticuffs at the local bar in the early hours of the morning. One must expand the definitional horizons to include the use of violence by groups that do not like what “we” think, and the use of violence by those that think like “us” and its use against “them.” We are living in a time where there exists a great divide between many Americans, and the potential threat of violence by Americans towards Americans should be of great concern to all of us These concerns are not new, especially when placed in the context of Hannah Arendt’s nearly half-century old book, On Violence (Arendt, 1970a). Arendt wrote this important literary contribution in the midst of the Vietnam War, the United States (U.S.) student riots, and escalating racial tensions of the late-mid 20th century. The authors will attempt to present this discourse through Hannah Arendt’s foresight, as presented in her 1960s and 1970s writings (Arendt & Kohn, 2006; Macauley, 1996; Moyn, 2008; Papadimos, 2009), in regard to current political matters and social trends
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