Writing after the Second World War, Hannah Arendt, in her text, The origins of totalitarianism, starts from a discussion on the difficult situation (danger) of " national minorities" and "stateless" people in the years between the two wars of European history to a fundamental criticism of the notion of "human rights". Who are these “minorities” and “stateless people” and why does their situation imply, for Arendt, the “decline of the nation-state” of the nineteenth century? Why does this lead to the “end of human rights”? What is the danger, for Arendt, in assuming that there is such a thing as “universal human rights”? Why do you see the emphasis on such rights more as a sign and symptom of dehumanization rather than a solution to prevent dehumanization? Do you find Arendt's criticism of the concept of "human rights" convincing? Even though I didn't completely understand the reading at first, after the class discussion things make a little more sense and are actually very interesting. We say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an original essay The book, The Origins of Totalitarianism, was written by Hannah Arendt, who was actually part of the Jewish minority and herself stateless. Luckily, she was able to escape the terror of the concentration camp and start a new life in the United States, far from hatred. So how did all this happen? How did she find herself in the situation of having to run for her life – a basic human right? Why was she so critical of the idea of ​​universal human rights? Fundamentally, the belief in universal human rights was really put to the test after the First World War. During that time, many people ended up living in different EU countries, without actually being citizens of any of them. Those countries/empires were mostly located in the eastern and southern parts of Europe. Since those nations were made up of populations with very different people and different cultures that could not form a nation for every existing culture, the existence of “minority groups” and “stateless groups” emerged. Even though Hannah puts these people into two separate groups, we can see throughout the book that they still overlap a lot. Unfortunately, as mentioned above, Hannah as a Jew lived with and was part of both groups. Because there were many people considered part of a minority group within a country at that time, Hannah sees that period as a “decline of a nation-state.” Although those “different” people were, in principle, citizens of the country in which they ended up living, they could not depend, as a minority within the dominant national culture, on the protection of their government. People who ended up stateless were not recognized as citizens under the laws of their own state and were prevented from “enjoying” any citizenship rights through government acts of denationalization. Because these groups could not enjoy political rights and were not part of a political community, they were considered “human and nothing but human.” However, minority treaties were established to give and attempt to give these minorities some sense of protection. However, the problem was that giving special human rights to a minority and not treating them as individuals of the state in which they should be protected means that this leads to dehumanization. Hannah also mentions “human rights,” which regardless of religion, nationality or ethnicity cannot and should not be taken away from human beings. However, it was discovered that “when human beings lack their own government and.