On Violence

Introduction to the new edition of Hannah Arendt’s On Violence published by Penguin on November 30th.

Hannah Arendt wrote her short and furious essay in the late 1960s, as a wave of violence was sweeping across the world. Below is an extract from my introduction to this new edition published by Penguin.

We must not be naive. Violence, Arendt teaches finally, can crush political power: you can occupy a country by force, you can bully citizens into silence, you can terrorize populations with your futile rage, and you can guard your borders with spite and barbed wire. But what violence can never do is produce genuine or lasting political power. It’s a point that current conductors of death and chaos would do well to note, as would those of us who seek to debunk and challenge their monstruous delusions. ‘The practice of violence changes the world,’ Hannah Arendt shouts to us from across the century, and then adds: ‘but the most probable change is to a more violent world.’ We should hear her.