The Crimes of States: Law, the State of Exception and World Alienation

• In Event: Organized Crime and State-Sponsored Terrorism

Abstract

The brilliant and ever relevant Hannah Arendt in The Human Condition speaks of world alienation. Arendt as a proponent of participatory democracy, well-aware of the crime of authoritarian and totalitarian states as exemplified in Nazi Germany, invests her heart in law and a solid constitution that is mindful of all citizens despite the inherent plurality and conflicting views of its inhabitants. While Arendt attends to the violence of Nazism and how ordinary citizens were implicated against the Other by laws that made them criminals, in Eichmann in Jerusalem Arendt sees the solution in the state and its laws. I argue that crimes of states should not be considered as aberrations. In line with Walter Benjamin, I contend that the state of exception has become the rule and states and their laws are behind the biggest crimes, leading to world alienation.

Author

• Ladan Adhami-Dorrani, York University