When Hannah Arendt wrote The Origins of Totalitarianism in 1951, she identified loneliness as among the most profound social conditions, one that made the twentieth century increasingly susceptible to the totalitarian movements of Nazism and Stalinism. She explained that loneliness was not simply a marginal feeling of being alone or temporarily disconnected from others. Instead, it was the frightening, everyday experience of being cut off from both others and oneself, abandoned such that one could no longer depend on shared understanding or even internal dialogue. This loss of both inner and outer connection left individuals vulnerable to the promises of totalitarian movements, which falsely offered a sense of belonging and absolute certainty.
As the common ground for terror, loneliness thus became a profoundly radical condition and, as such, the very essence of totalitarian government. That is why loneliness fundamentally differs from solitude and even isolation. Crucially, one can be isolated without feeling lonely. While profound isolation can certainly generate feelings of loneliness, loneliness itself extends beyond being alone. It is about being forsaken by all worldly ties and human companionship, even when surrounded by others. In such a detrimental state, one feels cut off from the world in its entirety, incapable of establishing deep and lasting relationships with others and the world they inevitably belong to.
Compared to the harmful nature of loneliness and radical isolation, Arendt emphasised that solitude is not only beneficial but also essential. Focusing on the ability to be with oneself, solitude is a state where thinking occurs as a reflective ‘conversation between me and myself’. This means that even when alone, one is not abandoned because one can still engage in the quiet dialogue of reflection.
Loneliness, however, is about the breakdown of this dialogue. It is about the failure of the capacity to converse with oneself or to find recognition in the shared understanding of equals. In loneliness, the self becomes silent, and in that silence, the ideological voices of others become dangerously persuasive. The totalitarian movements of the twentieth century did not arise solely through propaganda or coercion, but through the exploitation of the atomisation of individuals who no longer felt part of the common world. Mass society, the decline of traditional communities, and the disruptions of modern life created a generation that believed they had no place, no voice, and no recognition.
It was this lack of meaning, rather than mere material deprivation, that made people increasingly receptive to the absolutist ideologies of Nazism and Stalinism. The terror of totalitarianism lay not just in its violence and oppression, but also in its power to make people believe that life outside its strict ideological framework was meaningless, unworthy, or even unreal. In her most controversial book, Eichmann in Jerusalem, Arendt famously argued that radically isolated individuals like Eichmann are characterised not by malice or exceptional evil, but by mindlessness and reticence—a profound inability to think for themselves. For Arendt, what drives people like Eichmann is not a desire to be extraordinary or outstanding, but a willingness to remain consistent, straightforward, and stringent, entirely in line with the rigid ideological framework that deprived them of their innate capacity to think in the first place.
The Political Significance of Loneliness Today
Almost seventy-five years after the first publication of The Origins, Arendt’s insights on loneliness resonate with renewed urgency. Today, more than ever, we live in an era where social media connects us instantaneously but often leaves us feeling isolated. Additionally, globalised neoliberal policies further diminish local bonds of solidarity, enabling extremist political movements to flourish by exploiting the anxieties of those who feel invisible, unconnected, and unheard. Considering that the 2022 EU Loneliness Survey found that 13% of EU citizens admit to feeling lonely most or all of the time, and 35% admit to being lonely at least some of the time, this raises urgent questions about the relevance of Arendt’s insights on loneliness in evaluating today’s political climate. How can we understand the contemporary political significance of increasing loneliness? And to what extent is this rise in loneliness damaging the liberal political landscape and the resilience of constitutional democracy in Europe and the US?
Firstly, one could argue that although twentieth-century totalitarian movements like Nazism or Stalinism are unlikely to reappear, we are indeed living in what Suskind called ‘the age of extremism’. Both far-right and far-left populist parties are expanding and gaining an increasingly influential presence in everyday political life in Europe and the Americas. Additionally, a recent Freedom House analysis concluded that, as populist and nationalist forces made significant gains in democratic states, 2024 marked the nineteenth consecutive year of decline in global freedom. This current revival of populist authoritarianism at least indicates that it is worthwhile examining the role of increased loneliness in the rise of political extremism today.
However, in doing so, it is also crucial to bear in mind the distinctive nature of the times in which we are currently living. Unlike Arendt in the twentieth century, we inhabit an era characterised by globalised interconnectedness—an interconnectedness driven by economic interdependence and accelerated by social media and generative artificial intelligence. On the one hand, these processes have arguably heightened togetherness by strengthening bonds between people worldwide and making them more accessible through the global exchange of commodities. However, despite this hyperbolic interconnectedness, there remains ‘a widespread sense that we belong nowhere, that we have lost our nearness to others, and that we are neither supported by nor responsible for the communities in which we find ourselves’. This is a point Jennifer Gaffney makes in Political Loneliness: Modern Liberal Subjects in Hiding.
It is this paradoxical, or so-called ‘peculiar’, loneliness that might be the defining feature of our era. While we can bridge global distances through scientific and technological advancements, we still lack a deeper connection to ourselves and to one another. Although the liberal framework of social and economic interdependence once provided a guarantee of relative stability and perpetual peace, especially in post-World War II Europe, we now live in a neoliberal age where reckless economisation and excessive globalisation threaten the democratic virtue of belonging to a political community. As a result, authoritarian and populist discourses are once again able to position themselves as appealing solutions for a social environment that no longer feels familiar, capitalising on shared experiences of homesickness and uprootedness.
From Loneliness to Narcissism in the Neoliberal Era
The peculiar loneliness characterising the current social and political landscape significantly affects individuals on the micro level. Compared to the political environment of Arendt’s twentieth century, today’s neoliberal era is dominated by a widespread economisation of political and democratic subjectivity, fundamentally transforming the relationships with ourselves and others. In that sense, Arendtian loneliness today would be more akin to what critics like Christopher Lasch already called ‘the culture of narcissism’. As Foucauldian ‘entrepreneurs of the self’, neoliberal individuals become their own enterprises, with their personal dignity measured not by participation in a democratic community but by their ability to accumulate ‘human capital’. Consequently, neoliberal individuals are driven to continually manage, invest in, and enhance their own capabilities, transforming their identity from a stable basis for recognition into a project to be curated, displayed, and evaluated according to market-like criteria. Structural inequalities are viewed as matters of personal choice, and networks of solidarity and social redistribution are diminished in favour of interpersonal competition through personal growth and performance.
In the current digital age, this narcissistic propensity of neoliberalism only intensifies the damaging effects of loneliness and radical isolation. While twentieth-century Arendtian loneliness referred to a loss of meaningful connection, contemporary political narcissism explains how neoliberal policies have deepened this loss through an all-encompassing economisation of the public sphere, driven by micro-level tendencies such as excessive self-referentiality and what Byung-Chul Han already called auto-exploitation: the exhausting urge to constantly improve oneself in an ever-demanding, hyper-competitive environment.
What unites such tendencies is the imperative to continually project an image of competence, success, or uniqueness, turning sustainable relationships into stages for self-presentation rather than spaces of genuine reciprocity. Friendships become networks, communities become audiences, and the boundary between self and others blurs as people are no longer encountered in their own singularity but as mirrors or reflections in which the narcissistic, neoliberal individual seeks recognition. When such recognition is absent, a dangerous entanglement of loneliness and narcissism develops, not from a healthy love of self but, quite the opposite, from a fragile dependence on external validation due to a fractured or even diminished sense of selfhood.
Given the recent developments of American Trumpism and post-liberal populism in the EU, the political consequences of this transformation cannot be overstated. It is already becoming increasingly clear how narcissistic incentives are steadily influencing politics and democratic self-defence. However, while it is no coincidence that one of the most neoliberal countries in the world is governed by an openly narcissistic individual, neoliberal narcissism extends far beyond its quintessential personification. It indicates that politics today has become part of a self-referential cycle within a society that demands performance and achievement yet refuses dignity and recognition. Not unlike society at large, political parties are increasingly becoming like companies, advertising themselves on social media and attracting overly ambitious self-promoters for whom politics has become an integral part of their careerism. More concerned with short-term gains than with representing the deep-rooted concerns of their constituents, they become actors in a play entirely devoted to the technocratic nature of neoliberal bureaucracy—treating politics as a vocation rather than an ethically inspired effort to improve our common world.
So, while Arendt described loneliness as the loss of connection with both the world and oneself, contemporary neoliberal narcissism accelerates this loss by hollowing out both dimensions simultaneously. By turning inward towards an image of the self that is constantly measured against external, unrealistically high, indeed, extremist standards, individuals become unable to sustain the inner dialogue needed to create solitude. Additionally, by viewing others primarily as validators of their own self-image, the opportunity to build lasting relationships based on trust, responsibility, and mutual recognition is lost. As a result, democratic solidarity becomes highly delicate: collective struggles are reinterpreted as personal failures or successes, and individualistic narratives of incentive and personal choice replace the political framework of rights and obligations.
Ultimately, neoliberal narcissism may become the contemporary equivalent of the loneliness Arendt identified as a key factor in the rise of twentieth-century totalitarianism. While it is unlikely to produce the same outcomes as the inter-war totalitarian movements that relied on loneliness, the unique context of today’s neoliberal narcissism—marked by hyper-globalised markets and algorithmic social media echo chambers—could very well have the same harmful impact. Individuals, disconnected from genuine and lasting relationships with themselves and others, become vulnerable to political movements that exploit resentment, anxiety, and shared feelings of uprootedness. Adolescents and young teenagers are particularly at risk and should be better protected through targeted regulation and improved education, especially in critical thinking and navigating algorithm-driven social media platforms. When people view themselves as entrepreneurs of the self and see others as competitors or parts of their audience, the promises of liberal democracy become increasingly fragile. While solitude can foster personal reflection and critical thinking, narcissism encourages dependence on external approval. While democratic solidarity strengthens our shared world and political communities of belonging, loneliness increasingly erodes them. In today’s neoliberal era, the danger is not only that we are left alone, but that we are left alone together—each trapped in the self-destructive illusion of personal achievement, unable to build genuine and lasting connection.
Inias Laureys is a PhD student in Social and Political Philosophy at KU Leuven. His research explores the political significance of loneliness and narcissism and the rise of extremist political movements in contemporary liberal democracies.