Podcast Summary: New Books Network – Episode 160

"Hannah Arendt's Refugee Politics" (JP)
Host: John Plotz
Date: November 20, 2025

Episode Overview

This episode is a reflective soliloquy by John Plotz (Brandeis English Department) on the continued resonance of Hannah Arendt’s political thought in light of contemporary refugee crises, nationalism, and the politics of identity, inspired by his recent public essay Arendt's Refugee Politics. Plotz navigates Arendt’s signature works to unravel her nuanced thinking about Jewish identity, pariahs, parvenus, and the dangers of assimilation, with deep attention to their implications for today’s fraught discussions about refugees, group belonging, and political conformity.

Main Themes & Purpose

• Arendt’s Enduring Relevance: Why Arendt returns to public discourse as authoritarianism and ethno-nationalism rise anew.
• The Pariah and Parvenu: Contrast between authentic identity and assimilation in refugee politics.
• Universalism and Plurality: Reconciling Arendt's ideas of shared humanity with recognition of real differences.
• Warning Against "Camp Logic": Dangers of responding to oppression by seeking new exclusionary identities.
• Contemporary Parallels: Reading Arendt for insights into modern challenges — Israel/Palestine, Trump's America, and ongoing debates around refugee rights.

Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Arendt and the Logic of Oppression

• Plotz introduces Arendt’s critique of ethnic nationalism and how colonial racism paved the way for the Holocaust:
  • “First deploy the pseudo category of races to divide people, then use that difference as a way of justifying inequality and oppression, then go for the kill.” (03:15)
• Arendt’s universalism is challenged by her reflections on the “impossibility of disavowing one’s ethnic or religious origins.”

2. Refugee Identity: Pariah versus Parvenu

• We Refugees (1943): Arendt warns against refugees becoming “social parvenus,” hiding their identity to assimilate:
  • “Willing to sweep their own identity under the rug so as to rise in a society that scorns Jews.” (04:43)
• Plotz identifies Arendt’s praise for “conscious pariahs”—those who openly embrace their Jewishness while demanding inclusion:
  • “...tried to make of the emancipation of the Jews... an admission of the Jews as Jews to the ranks of humanity.” (04:55)
• Arendt’s advice: “Beat them, don’t join them.” (05:22)

3. Universalism, Plurality & the Battle Against Categorization

• Arendt’s ethics require us to “make our mind go visiting:”
  • “Arendt praises such boundary free multi perspectivalism as an indispensable intellectual tool in the battle against fixed categories of ethnic or racial or religious identity.” (05:44)
• Plurality, not sameness, is central:
  • “...because we are all the same, that is human in such a way that nobody is ever the same as anyone else who ever lived, lives, or will live.” (citing The Human Condition, 1958) (07:10)

4. The Political Context of "We Refugees"

• Arendt, herself a refugee, wrote We Refugees as news of the Holocaust began to reach American Jews.
• She rejects both moderate and radical Zionist ideas, resisting the “sectarian division” of a future Jewish commonwealth while reflecting on Jewish vulnerability and identity politics:
  • “Her objections... inspired her... to formulate a vision of a future Palestine that repudiated not only the concept of a, quote, Jewish commonwealth, but also the sectarian division implied by any notion of minority and majority rights within the unitary state.” (08:28)

5. The Critique of Assimilation and "Good Immigrant" Rhetoric

• Plotz draws a parallel from Arendt's critique of assimilationist Jews to contemporary immigrant politics:
  • “Her denunciation of parvenu politics is a warning about the good immigrant rhetoric that has proved such a noxious force in building Trump’s surprising appeal to newly minted Americans.” (12:01)
• Notable callback to Arendt’s correspondence with Gershom Sholem:
  • “I do not love the Jews, nor do I believe in them. I merely belong to them as a matter of course. Beyond dispute or argument.” (12:38)
• Arendt’s refusal to pin identity politics on “love” — for or against a people — is framed as deeply radical.

6. Lessons for Today: Pariah Politics versus Conformity

• Arendt urges us to remember the outsider’s perspective, even in power:
  • “Don’t go telling people you’ve always been a Saint Bernard, or you may come to believe it.” (14:22)
• Recollection of her warning against hypocrisy:
  • “Pariahs should not become hypocrites a generation later.” (14:50)
• Plotz links this directly to Israel’s policies today and to Western ethnonationalism more broadly, suggesting Arendt would have denounced “crimes against humanity perpetrated on the body of the Gazan people” just as she did those in 1960s Israel.

7. The Limits and Dangers of National Belonging

• Critique of exchanging one group identity for another:
  • “Love for the Jewish people could be corrected by turning it into love for the American people instead.” (16:14)
• Refugee status as a new, permanent, and destabilizing identity category — neither exile nor migrant.
• Quote from Arendt:
  • “History has created a new kind of human beings, the kind that are put in concentration camps by their foes and in internment camps by their friends.” (16:42)

8. “Isonomia” and Alternative Political Models

• Cites Lindsay Stonebridge: Arendt admired the concept of “isonomia”—respect for others’ autonomy and one’s own:
  • “This politics of respect for others autonomy coupled with insistence on one’s own freedom of thought and deed has gone by many names… perhaps isonomia is also a hopeful way of capturing what Arendt values in pariah politics.” (19:04)
• Draws connections to Kropotkin’s “mutual aid,” Bakunin’s “anarchism,” Ursula Le Guin’s “solitary solidarity.”

9. Courage, Integrity, and Living in Truth

• Arendt’s ideal: “think without a banister”—resisting conformity in dark times.
• “Very few individuals have the strength to conserve their own integrity if their social, political and legal status is completely confused.” (20:15)
• The example of refugees who refuse easy conformity:
  • “Those who... resist the temptation to define themselves anew by some other identity label, have found a way to live in truth.” (20:40)

10. Final Reflection: Pariah Politics as Ethical Imperative

• The imperative for not-yet-refugees:
  • “We ought not play the parvenu, which in this context means not bending the knee to the false comforts of conformity, to a bold, bigoted political regime that bolsters ethnonationalism and crimes against humanity elsewhere, and is grossly indifferent to its weakest citizens and subjects at home.” (21:15)
• The sustaining value of pariah politics:
  • “By embracing pariah politics instead, we can draw sustenance, as Arendt puts it, in the human condition not from what we are, but from who we are.” (21:35)

Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On the mechanism of racism and oppression:
  “First deploy the pseudo category of races to divide people, then use that difference as a way of justifying inequality and oppression, then go for the kill.” — John Plotz (citing Arendt, 03:15)
• On pluralism:
  “Plurality is the condition of human action because we are all the same, that is human, in such a way that nobody is ever the same as anyone else who ever lived, lives, or will live.” — Hannah Arendt (The Human Condition, 1958; 07:10)
• On the danger of assimilation:
  “We have decided instead so many of us to try a change of identity, and this curious behavior makes matters much worse.” — John Plotz (summarizing Arendt, 12:59)
• On belonging:
  “I do not love the Jews, nor do I believe in them. I merely belong to them as a matter of course. Beyond dispute or argument.” — Hannah Arendt (12:38)
• On political courage:
  “Even under a totalitarian regime there always remain a few people capable of evading the pressure to go and get along.” — John Plotz (18:40)
• On living truthfully as a refugee:
  “Those who... resist the temptation to define themselves anew by some other identity label, have found a way to live in truth.” — John Plotz (20:40)
• On the sustaining value of pariah politics:
  “...draw sustenance, as Arendt puts it, in the human condition not from what we are, but from who we are.” — John Plotz (21:35)

Timestamps for Key Segments

• [01:11] — John Plotz introduces theme and relevance of Arendt today
• [03:15] — Arendt’s account of the origins of totalitarianism
• [04:43] — "Parvenu" vs. "Pariah" refugees in We Refugees
• [05:44] — Pluralism, visiting minds, and ethics of understanding
• [07:10] — The value of plurality; quote from The Human Condition
• [08:28] — Context: Holocaust, American Jewry, Zionism, and Palestine
• [12:01] — Connection to contemporary “good immigrant” rhetoric
• [12:38] — Arendt’s letter to Gershom Sholem; identity as belonging
• [16:42] — The new identity of “refugee” and camp logic
• [19:04] — Politics of isonomia; alternative models to nationalism
• [20:15] — Courage and integrity in the loss of social status
• [21:15] — Ethical imperative: pariah politics vs. conformity
• [21:35] — Concluding: the value of identity in action, not essence

Conclusion

This solo episode is a dense, thought-provoking tour through Arendt’s unresolved questions about identity and belonging in the context of refugee politics, offering powerful lessons for anyone grappling with contemporary nationalism, exclusion, and the eternal challenge to live authentically and ethically among others. Plotz’s reflections, drawing on Arendt’s original words, connect past to present and urge listeners to resist the lure of easy national pride or self-effacing assimilation—inviting us all to find sustenance “not from what we are, but from who we are.”