Disraeli and Race Theory in Arendt's Origins of Totalitarianism

Introduction: Disraeli as Arendt's Potent Wizard

In "The Potent Wizard" chapter of The Origins of Totalitarianism, Hannah Arendt centers her analysis on Benjamin Disraeli — an exceptionally ambitious politician whose career was marked by remarkable luck and fortune. Unlike many of his Jewish contemporaries, Disraeli never experienced the feeling of being déclassé. Instead, he expressed his Jewish identity openly and proudly through every aspect of his public life. Despite his family not being born in England, he ascended the political ladder in London with extraordinary success. His deep understanding of social dynamics was captured in his observation that "what is a crime among the multitude is only a vice among the few" (p. 89), a remark Arendt reads as an early indication of the rise of Mob and Mafia politics in the nineteenth century.

Disraeli's Political Rise and Jewish Identity

A significant factor in Disraeli's success was his capacity for what Arendt describes as "absolute sincerity and unreserved" engagement (p. 90). Born an Englishman, he benefited from the fact that England held Jewish settlers of the eighteenth century — who were generally educated and wealthy — in relatively high regard. Disraeli embraced his Jewish roots because they cast him as a "chosen man of the chosen race," while his English identity offered him an ideal platform for political ambition. His election to the exclusive Grillion's dining club (p. 91) was a significant social achievement, but his most prized accomplishment was a sincere personal friendship with the Queen.

Disraeli was broadly popular and well-regarded, a fact Arendt attributes to his greatest social gift: that "nobody said in private that would not have flattered and pleased him if it had been said in public" (p. 92). His association with Lord Robert Cecil and his personal ambition drew comparisons to Carlyle's conception of heroes. Yet his longing for aristocratic society was not unusual among the English middle class of the era. Driven by his ambitions, he joined the Conservative Party and pursued a policy that would always "select the Whigs for hospitality and the Radicals for alliance" (p. 93).

Across Europe, the middle class rarely succeeded in reconciling their intellectual capacities with their position on the social ladder. The German philistine, for example, keenly observed Disraeli's struggle for nobility and the broader imperative to "protect aristocratic titles against bourgeois money" (p. 93) — a tension manifested in the development of vague blood theories and the strict regulation of marriages among the upper classes.

Race Theory and the Aristocracy of Nature

Although wealthy middle-class men could purchase titles — thereby unsettling the aristocracy — Disraeli constructed a counter-theory to challenge this encroachment. He argued that "Englishmen are from a parvenu and hybrid race, while himself was from the purest blood in Europe," that "Arabian laws and Syrian customs regulated life as a Briton," and that the "Jewess is the queen of heaven" (p. 93). These provocative claims struck at the weakest point of aristocratic race theory and ignited a broader public discourse on race, in which Judaism came to be reduced, among assimilated Jewry, to a matter of birth rather than belief.

Disraeli and many of his fellow Jews considered themselves children of God without necessarily believing in God. He emphasized racial superiority precisely because race was linked to blood — and blood, in his view, was the foundation of the only true aristocracy: the "aristocracy of nature" (p. 94), produced by an unmixed race. This framework, as Arendt demonstrates, had profound and ultimately dangerous implications for how racial ideology would develop in later decades.

Reference

Arendt, H. (1951). The origins of totalitarianism. New York: Harcourt, Brace, and Company. pp. xv–477.