Arendt provides a historical account of the forces that crystallized into totalitarianism. The ebb and flow of nineteenth-century anti-Semitism (she deemed the Dreyfus Affair a dress rehearsal for the Final Solution) and the rise of European imperialism, accompanied by the invention of racism as the only possible rationalization for it.
The first book of its kind to look at the legacy of the avant-garde in relation to the deepening crisis of capitalist non-reproduction.