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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 14 March 2025
Hannah Arendt published The Origins of Totalitarianism, her expansive analysis of the development and spread of totalitarianism in Europe in 1951, in the aftermath of the rise of anti-Semitism and Nazism, the Holocaust, and the violent destruction of life, community, and nation left both in the wake of World War II and amidst Stalinism. Her analysis rooted firmly in Europe, she commented in the preface that, “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 and selfinterest - forces that look like sheer insanity, if judged by the standards or other centuries.” Over sixty years later, noted Thai historian Nidhi Eoseewong picked up Arendt's work to write two articles about the forms of creeping totalitarianism emergent in Thailand in the long aftermath of the 19 September 2006 coup. 2 While the points of difference between interwar Europe and present-day Thailand are as multiple as the points of resonance, the shape of totalitarianism itself is very similar. By threading his analysis of changes in Thai society over the last ten years through a reading of the chapters on the mass and dictatorship in Hannah Arendt's The Origins of Totalitarianism, Nidhi provides a broad context and framework for understanding present-day developments in Thailand, which mitigate against the very isolation he and Arendt argue is a key feature of totalitarianism. In what follows, I offer an account of the current crisis in Thai politics informed by Nidhi's essays. The translation of the two short essays, “Totalitarian Dictatorship,” and “The Great Mass of the People,” originally published on Prachatai, an independent Thai news and commentary site, follow my account.
1 Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism (New York: Harcourt, Brace, and Company, 1951), vii. The book is available as a free PDF or RTF file sponsored at the Internet Archive of the California Digital Library.
2 Nidhi Eoseewong taught in the Department of History at Chiang Mai University from the late 1960s until his retirement as a Professor in 2000, when he was also awarded the Fukuoka Prize. He is the author of over forty books and hundreds of newspaper articles. While most of his writing is only available in Thai, one of his most important books, Pen and Sail: Literature and History in Early Bangkok, has been translated into English, as well as several articles in addition to the two reprinted her, including “The Thai Cultural Constitution,” “Understanding the Situation in the South as a ‘Millenarian Revolt,” and “Mass Politics and Reconciliation.”
3 “Thailand at the Brink,” New York Times, 27 February 2014. Accessed 1 April 2014.
4 See “PDRC guards torture after finding a UDD guard before they threw him in the Bang Pakong River,” (in Thai), Prachatai, 4 March 2014. Accessed 1 April 2014.
5 The Assembly for the Defense of Democracy was founded on 10 December 2013, Constitution Day, and one day after Parliament was dissolved. Their first, founding public statement, issued on 10 December 2013, can be read here. Their second statement, issued on 23 March 2014 can be read here.
6 David Streckfuss, “Risky road ahead in avoiding civil war,” Bangkok Post, 26 March 2014. Accessed 1 April 2014.
7 Hannah Arendt, Essays in Understanding, 1930-1954: Formation, Exile, and Totalitarianism (New York: Schocken, 2005), page 310.
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