Nationalism and Anti-Semitism Hannah Arendt on the Jewish Question and the Nation-State

The purpose of this article is to show that anti-Semitism as a social and political phenomenon has been central to the criticism made by Hannah Arendt to the nation state. Anti-Semitism, imperialism and totalitarianism present the need to find a new paradigm to conceptualize politics. The analysis of these elements allows us to pay special attention to the characteristics of democracies that could always become violent in the name of the nation, particularly against minorities and foreigners. Following the factors that structure Arendt's analysis, this article offers three contributions: in the first part, an analysis is presented on the Emancipation and assimilation of Jews in the secular nation-states; in the second part, the creation of a culture of anti-Semitism based on the Dreyfus case is studied; and in the third part, the paradoxes of the nation-state in light of anti-Semitism are described.